Ninety Minutes of Snow
by FS
Summary: They have only ninety minutes to track and defeat the Boss before the bomb goes off (a tale about quirky mediators, unreliable weapons, poisonous flowers, angry pets, clumsy allies, death, and resurrection...)
1. First Part

Disclaimer:

This _Detective Conan_ Christmas fic is not by Gosho Aoyama.

 **Ninety Minutes of Snow**

 _by FS_

 _for Grandpa, who wished for "snow" ;)_

* * *

 **I.**

 _1._

 _*snow*_

 _A white figure, whose outlines remain indistinct in the shifting candlelight, is standing in front of an intricate human-sized mirror, whose glittering surface is alternately concave and convex in the pattern of an archetypal snowflake. For about a minute, they ceaselessly, obsessively, slam at the mirror glass with the morningstar they've just taken from the shelf on the tapestry-covered wall._

 _As the glass doesn't show the slightest scratch, the white figure grabs the silver mirror by two of its rose-shaped ornaments, which adorn its luxuriant frame, and hurls it out of the floor-to-ceiling window in a towering rage. The mirror is flung against a jagged cliff, whereupon the mirror glass flies out of the frame and shatters into a million pieces, which are blown by the wind across the sea, where they mingle with a myriad of snowflakes out there..._

 _*snow*_

 _2._

 _*snow*_

 _*snow*_

Silvery white snowflakes of various sizes and shapes are swirling around her small hooded frame as she steps out into the tiny rose garden—a sight which reminds her of the "Little Red Riding Hood" nickname Jodie-sensei gave her during her Haibara phase. If he comments on this first thing upon his arrival, he'll be dead before he can finish his sentence.

"Are you ready? I'll be with you in a minute."

His voice sounds warmer and nicer than usual, she observes. The new headset the Professor invented must have enhanced it.

"I'm waiting in the garden... if one can call this a garden. How much time do you have?"

"About two hours unless someone gets murdered in the meantime."

She winces at the thought.

"That will suffice. We have exactly ninety minutes after meeting George Brummel, the first mediator. The bomb will be activated the moment he hands us the package. If we haven't caught G. H. by the time the bomb goes off, it will be game over."

"I'm ready now." Through her headset, she can hear him gulp down his drink and then chew something which sounds like an especially delicious piece of chocolate. "Have you checked your weapons yet?"

"Do I really need to bring a sniper rifle?" She looks askance at her odd assortment of weapons and tools. "Sidearms might be more useful."

"We need one sniper rifle. Should I bring it while you bring our snacks instead?" His tone is just this side of insolent.

"No, thanks. _You_ pack the snacks!" She would resemble Red Riding Hood even more if she carried a basket.

"All right," he chuckles. "Just a sec!"

She smiles at the familiar sound of it. He seems fine again after all the drama of last week. Maybe they've resolved their issues, whatever those were.

 _*snow*_

 _*snow*_

The ground is already covered by thick blankets of snow, and she herself has begun to look like a wandering snowwoman as she paces up and down in front of the twin rose bushes, which form two high arches framing the barred windows of their houses. Velvety, blood-red, cupped double blooms with golden stamens and large, leathery, deep green leaves. Well foliaged, raspberry scented, winter-hardy.

The name is "Bee, Queen Bee", according to the travel guide.

Triggered by the sound of snow crunching under leather boots—footsteps so inhumanly regular that it's almost creepy—she jumps, turns round, and simultaneously draws a pistol. The stranger approaching her is dressed in gaudy attire: a purple coat and purple leather boots, a sapphire-blue hat and a cape in the same colour, a silver-threaded red silk scarf, a silver brooch engraved with "KAI"...

"Are you 'Kai'?" she asks into her headset after a moment of hesitation.

"Yes, Ma'am."

He has the audacity to laugh. She briefly considers shooting him for this, but there is no point in wasting bullets.

"'Ma'am'? Keep this up! I like it!"

"I knew you would!" He tries to hold back but fails miserably. "Little Burgundy Riding Hood!"

She draws another pistol, aims at his head, and shoots.

 _*snow*_

 _*snow*_

 _3._

 _*snow*_

 _*snow* *snow*_

They find the first meeting point in a dilapidated Victorian mansion in the southern outer suburbs, after trudging through the snowy winter landscape for a whole moon. A few petals of the roses she shot at "Kai" are still stuck in his scarf. The burgundy petals are barely visible against the crimson silk. But she saves a photo nonetheless to preserve the memory.

"Here we go!" "Kai" rings at the silver bell on the mantlepiece. "I bet this is the cue."

The high mahogany bookshelf next to the fireplace moves aside, revealing a hidden staircase. A few seconds later, the end of an ebony walking stick emerges from the dark and knocks twice against the bookshelf before its owner appears in the doorway. George (Beau) Brummel, the first mediator, is an elegant, dandyish guy in a black beaver topper and a shiny black coat. She bets the man is clad in white tie and tails underneath. And yet the allusion to a crow is not instantly obvious.

"I'm 'Hans'," the mediator says, eyeing each of them respectively.

Seconds pass, but she doesn't give in.

"And I'm 'Gerda'," says Shinichi dryly, knowing she wouldn't ever say it.

"The name fits you!" she comments, which earns her an exasperated sigh.

"What did the splinters of the hobgoblin's mirror do?" asks "Hans" in all seriousness, addressing both "Gerda" and her.

"Distort the truth by exaggerating the negative details," Shinichi offers. He sounds slightly bored. Apparently, the riddle is a tad too easy.

"Hans" eyes "Gerda" disapprovingly, with a deepening frown. The ebony walking stick is now slightly raised and aimed at Shinichi's feet. Worried, Shiho prepares herself to shoot if Shinichi gets attacked.

"Fail to reflect the good and the beautiful in things and people," Shinichi tries again, "or rather shrink the good and the beautiful to almost nothing at all."

Wary of the strangers in front of him, "Hans" takes one step back and then another step back, gradually retreating into the darkness from which he has emerged.

"Got into people's eyes and hearts, distorting their perception and turning their hearts to lumps of ice," Shiho quickly interjects.

"Here is your package!" George Brummel declares, detaches the silver chain holding a large snowflake-shaped locket from his wrist by pressing an ice-blue button, and cuffs the silver wristband to her left wrist. "You have exactly ninety minutes from now on."

With that, he leaves, disappearing into the winding staircase from which he has come. His resounding footsteps echo overhead for a few seconds until the sound stops. She can hear wings flap. A crow caws twice in the distance.

"That was smart!" Shinichi sounds genuinely impressed. "How did you do it?"

"I realized we should take his question literally. He didn't want to know what the devil's mirror does. He wanted to know what its splinters do." She tucks the locket away, deep into her sleeve, after inspecting its snowflake pattern. "I wonder why he has chosen _The Snow Queen_ for the code though."

"He wanted us to read _The Snow Queen_ for the mission," Shinichi muses. "Is there anything which links the Boss to Andersen's _Snow Queen_?"

The image of the twin rose bushes comes to mind. But since the idea is too silly to be pondered, she brushes it aside.

"I can't think of anything."

"I also wonder what 'G. H.' means," Shinichi murmurs. "Any ideas?"

"Great Hail?" she suggests while they're inspecting the mansion together.

"Nice try," he comments, sarcastically. "What else?"

"It fits the winter theme," she insists. "There are worse code names! It could also be a reference to the Bible." She quickly consults the internet. "'And there fell upon men a great hail out of heaven, every stone about the weight of a talent...' Revelation 16:21 KJV."

"What's a 'talent'?"

"Other translations say it's about a hundred pounds."

"Well, that's... really heavy!" He laughs. "Let's hope that we won't be greeted by any of those when we get there."

 _*snow*_

 _*snow* *snow*_

 _4._

 _*snow*_

 _*snow* *snow*_

 _*snow*_

The time-worn Victorian mansion—still lavishly furnished although the hand-painted furniture has seen better days—is sorrowfully evocative of an empty bird's nest after the chicks have learned to fly. Dust has settled indiscriminately on all the surfaces—Medieval and Tudor style cabinets and Japanese style sideboards alike. The only exception is the vanity table in the bedroom, which looks almost inhabited. A polished mahogany dressing mirror—the eye-catcher of the room—is standing on a flat camellia-shaped base and carved feet. In front of it, colourful bottles, flasks, vials, pots, a black wig, and a basket of apples and white camellias are artfully arranged on the vanity table in an intentionally faux-haphazard fashion.

Since these could be clues Beau Brummel has left behind for their meeting with the second mediator, Shiho settles herself into the blue velvet-cushioned Tudor armchair and gazes into the dressing mirror, where her reflection greets her in the most favourable light. Her reddish hair and her pale complexion, both of which she considered disadvantages when she compared herself to the bronzed brunettes at school, blend well into the Victorian style room. For the first time in her life, she feels like a real beauty, not just like a fairly attractive woman who takes good care of her looks.

Instinctively, she takes the black wig into her hands to inspect the long, lush, intricate ringlets—the sort of curls one expects from the heroine of a Gothic novel. According to the guide, it's made of natural hair, and the monofilament top is hand-tied to give the wearer natural movement and a comfortable feel.

She wonders if she is supposed to wear the wig for the second mediator; but since it might be a liability and she doesn't want it to take damage during a fight, she only stuffs it into her bag in case she needs it later.

"In the drawers, I've found outdoor clothes and a scrapbook filled with cutouts of advice columns taken from _Harper's Bazaar_ —'The Ugly Papers: Or Hints for the Toilet', written by Mrs S. D. Powers," Shinichi remarks. "'Is there anything as a hopelessly homely woman?' she wrote. And, 'Everybody knows they're inventions, and accepts them as such, like paste brilliants at a theatre'."

The cutouts are at times flower-shaped, at times snowflake-shaped, and the two sentences he just read aloud have been underlined with what she believes to be a liquid eyeliner.

"I wonder if we really have to carry all this stuff." She eyes the motley assortment of cosmetics for a moment, skeptical as to whether the bottles and flasks would survive the journey.

"We must take them," he decides. "They don't look like the kind of cosmetics you can buy over the counter."

As expected, there are no fingerprints on the surfaces. The containers are labelled with handwritten lists of ingredients and handdrawn watercolour and ink illustrations, all of which are accompanied by the same slogan.

"Beauty is a Duty," Shinichi reads aloud. "I gather this was a Victorian motto?"

"Seems so, although I don't think it's an exclusively Victorian thing. Even now, it's common to chase eternal youth and the famed translucent white skin although a bronzed complexion is more desirable in some parts of the world."

"The owner of this bedroom certainly chases it." He proudly presents his loot. "Lo and behold: veils, gloves, a parasol."

"Maybe they only have a strong sun allergy," she suggests, jokingly.

"Very unlikely."

It's highly unlikely indeed, considering the contents of the cosmetics.

"This pot contains lead." Shinichi lets the pot of white paint disappear into one of his satchels. "I doubt they smiled much while wearing it since the paint would crack if they did."

"'C: Consumption glamour'." She consults her travel guide while he wraps up the vials and flasks for the journey. "The Victorians romanticized the symptoms of tuberculosis: skinny waist, translucent skin, blue veins, watery eyes."

"Belladonna 'Nightshade' eye drops for glistening eyes. Lead paint for flawless white skin. Arsenic wafers against pimples and freckles... The Victorians died a horrible death for the consumptive look. I don't think we're expected to use this stuff, but let's take all of it since it's better to be safe than sorry."

"Before the Victorians, people died from using metal-laden creams, too; and nowadays it's Botox—Botulinum toxin—and mercury-laden skin whiteners. Things haven't changed much." She ponders over the thought for a moment. "No, maybe things _have_ changed. In Victorian times, young people could die of so many things. When an electrical mishap or a fire, or simply one of the countless diseases could cost you your life and poverty was worse than death, dying from beauty products after enjoying a comfortable youth doesn't seem like the worst ending."

 _*snow*_

 _*snow* *snow*_

 _*snow*_

Since time is scarce and they might not be able to return to this mansion once they've left it, they end up pocketing anything they can carry for fear of overlooking important details. Her satchels are packed with bottles of ammonia, vinegar, and arsenic; flasks of various mixtures of rose water and violet water; vials of belladonna drops; pots filled to the brim with zinc oxide and powder; red lip salve made of almond oil, geranium oil, santal oil, wax, and alkanet root; red lip rouge made of carmine derived from the cochineal insect; a natural bristle brush with a silver handle; combs, a curling iron; jewellery, costumes and shoes, even a corset, which would give her the desirable emaciated look and the stoop of a tuberculosis patient.

Consumptive chic. Beautiful things are even more precious when their ethereal quality is emphasized. Apart from the stoop, the glamorized feverish tuberculosis look with soft shiny hair, delicate translucent skin, red lips, dilated pupils, and glistening eyes—a more desirable alternative to the ravages of smallpox and cholera—is still a thing.

"Isn't zinc oxide used for treatment of diaper rashes?" Shinichi asks while ransacking the cabinets.

"General skin irritations, minor burns, warts. It's still used in sunscreen." She pauses in dismay. "Why are you thinking of diaper rashes of all things?"

"That's what automatically came to mind. I'm not taking concrete steps to get an offspring, if that's what you're asking!"

 _*snow*_

 _*snow* *snow*_

 _*snow*_

It feels like déjà vu to step into a garden again. Glittering snowflakes are swirling around the flower bushes and trees like an excited swarm of bees. "Tamingo Follies"—the spray roses adorning the iron gate—possess cup-shaped blooms in an intriguing shade of red and matte green foliage, which captivatingly contrast with the abundant white camellia shrubs behind the mansion.

"Snow Flurry", she informs Shinichi.

"Very fitting name! Do you think we need them?" Judging by his tone, he thinks not.

"We already have them: these are the same as the camellias in the apple basket. I'll pick a rose instead."

Fastening one of the Tamingo Follies on her cape with a silver brooch she has taken from a drawer of the vanity, she regrets not having picked a Queen Bee as well. But time is slipping away and the snowflake pattern on the locket has already turned. She estimates it to be about sixty degrees: one sixth of ninety minutes. About fifteen minutes are already gone.

 _*snow*_

 _*snow* *snow*_

 _*snow*_

 _5._

 _*snow*_

 _*snow* *snow*_

 _*snow*_

 _*snow*_

The journey to the next town leads through the woods, which is teamed with wild wolves and bears. Luckily, most of them are easily scared away. Only twice do they have to shoot: once at a young black wolf that has been habituated to people and once at an old grizzly desperate for food. It was good practice since they're going to need their weapons later.

Although she is certain she isn't blood-thirsty or cruel in any sense of the word, she can see the purely abstract appeal of fresh blood and black fur against the white snow.

 _How I wish that I had a daughter that had skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, and hair as black as ebony..._ The Queen knew that no sight was as striking as a pair of intense red lips in a pale face framed by black locks. Demure yet provocative—so little defense for so much promise.

Snow White, the most beautiful of all, lost her home at seven and had to stay with seven adult men in the woods before she was poisoned and resurrected. As gripping and glamorous as her story is, Shiho doubts her loving mother had wished for this to happen to her darling daughter.

"We're faster than expected!" To her amusement, Shinichi makes a quirky dance-like move as he slides down the snowy hill. "Aren't white camellias supposed to bring the receiver luck? Seems true for us!"

"For you!" she corrects him as she follows him from a distance. He is exasperatingly fast, and she can barely keep up with him on her shorter legs, but at least he frequently stops to wait for her.

"What does the guide say about the flower meaning of camellias during the Victorian era?" he asks, slowing down so that she can follow him. "I remember floriography was quite popular back then."

"In Victorian times, camellias were a secret message to the recipient saying they were adorable, that is... unless you held them upside down, which meant that the flower meaning would be reversed."

"I'm sure whoever received the camellia bouquet was 'adorable', at least in a certain lighting, considering their skincare regime and make-up."

"If you allude to the belladonna and the arsenic, yes." Or rather arsenic trioxide—'white arsenic', as it was called in the nineteenth century—which is extremely toxic unlike the "real" chemist's 'arsenic', element number 33 of the periodic table. "Who wouldn't find sparkling eyes and a porcelain complexion adorable? If you're thinking of the white lead paint, no. The modern make-up industry has come a long way since then. Quality make-up is now less toxic and looks very subtle."

"How did they eat the wavers? I gather gluttons were instantly punished by death unless the wavers contained extremely low doses of arsenic."

"Not more than one box at once, at least not in the beginning, if they wanted to survive it. There were cases of people dying after ingesting two boxes of wavers in the hope of speeding up the procedure. Of course there were prescriptions, but not everyone followed them."

"Arsenic trioxide was available, cheap, tasteless, and colourless—the perfect poison. The only catch was that it had to be dissolved in a hot beverage since it wasn't very soluble. I'm sure not only rats but also more than a few unfortunate husbands received a deadly dose of it, usually in the tea, the hot chocolate, or the porridge."

"In bread and other solid food as well, says the guide."

"How very charming!"

"I'm sure most of them deserved it. In a marriage, men had all the advantages while women had to conform to ridiculous expectations. Most marriages were arranged marriages between a young girl and a much older man who was affluent enough to marry. Widows were the only respectable women who enjoyed considerable freedom, at least in bourgeois circles." She consults the guide. "The 'Angel in the House'—a term derived from the title of the narrative poem 'Angel in the House' by Coventry Patmore, applied to middle-class women who could afford to stay at home. The 'Angel in the House' is expected to be a beacon of morality for her husband. She is domestic, submissive, innocent, pure, and extremely helpless outside the home."

She shows Shinichi a picture of Emily Patmore, Coventry Patmore's wife, the supposedly ideal woman depicted in the poem.

"Nice though a bit expressionless," he acknowledges.

"The Botox look. Do you know that not having facial expressions will change your brain?"

"Yes, it affects brain signals from your hands and your ability to read expressions. But well, one has to choose, right? Crow's feet or brain damage. I personally find crow's feet really pretty, by the way..."

She informs him that his comment won't affect her decision if she ever considers getting Botox against her crow's feet, whereupon he laughs, claiming her fear of his influence is telling.

 _*snow* *snow* *snow*_

 _*snow* *snow*_

"Would you use any of these cosmetics?" he asks her during lunch break, while they're going through their inventory. He has brought a thick blanket, on which they're now sitting, eating apples at a small frozen lake.

"There are a few good things. The zinc oxide, for instance, is still used in modern sunscreens. Rose water and violet water can't hurt. The lip salve seems fine as well unless I'm allergic to any of the ingredients, which I doubt." Just for fun, she memorizes the exact order of the flasks and pots. "I'm not fond of the carmine lip rouge, but I wouldn't mind applying it if I need to. I can make do without the belladonna drops, lead paint, and arsenic wavers, though, thank you. I also don't think drinking vinegar will help me lose weight."

"A bit of ammonia water for your skin?" he teasingly offers, mimicking a stooping sales person carrying a basket of apples, cosmetics, and camellias. "Or do you prefer a mercury-laden silver comb, beautiful little one?"

"I'm not pretty enough to accept your offers, and I'm too well-behaved to accept anything from strangers while my seven mentors aren't home!"

"Take this," he says after going through his inventory. "I'm sure you don't want to see this on _me_."

The pot of lip rouge he has looted from the mansion was made after a sixteenth-century recipe, which includes mercuric sulphide. The guide says that Queen Elizabeth wore this lip rouge with Venetian cerus—a foundation which contained lead and vinegar. Unsurprisingly, Queen Elizabeth died from blood poisoning, rumoured to have been caused by her toxic cosmetics.

"So I'll have to wear the deadly lip rouge just because you would look less good with it?"

He fails to express empathy.

"Only if needed."

Since throwing the pot of lip rouge at his head isn't an option, she resigns to accepting it. Maybe she can use it on him later, she remarks—of course "only if needed".

 _*snow*_

 _*snow* *snow* *snow* *snow*_

"Here, have another apple before we go."

"You really want me to bite into these poisoned apples, don't you?"

She eats the baked apple he handed her nonetheless, which is, luckily, not poisoned, while he patiently waits for her to be done. Efficient as he is, he is always one step ahead, which makes her feel annoyingly slow in comparison.

"Maybe you should wear a few things we found in that mansion," he suggests. "I think the second mediator expects it from you."

"I'll do that after giving my hair the recommended hundred strokes so that it will be silky and smooth." After finishing the apple, she brushes her hair with the silver-handled soft natural bristle brush, using the frozen lake as mirror.

"Did you know that women bathed in arsenic springs?" he asks as he nosily peers over her shoulder at her reflection. "My mother once told me about it. "They knew that once they had started it, they would have to keep up the habit for life unless they wanted to suffer the withdrawal symptoms."

That's more insane than she can imagine. But it was only consistent for people who used belladonna and ate arsenic wafers.

"There is also the tapeworm diet. It's unlikely it had ever been a real fad since the pills which were supposed to contain tapeworms were only placebos. But the idea of losing weight with a tapeworm is still prevalent today."

"I don't want to imagine it!" She decides to try on a corset and a gorgeous emerald ballroom dress, which brings out her reddish hair, to see whether they fit. "At least I don't seem to need a tapeworm for these... But don't pull too hard, please."

 _*snow*_ _*snow* *snow* *snow*_

 _*snow*_

The famous city library—a product of the gothic revival from about 1850 and thus decorated with an impressive finial and black-painted iron railings—is packed with books on Victorian fashion and advice on how to find a good husband. After purchasing powdered charcoal and Dr MacKenzie's Improved Harmless Arsenic Complexion Wavers ("just in case..."), she spends a ridiculous amount of time reading about nose machines before she moves on to the most pleasant task—leafing through all the books on mirror legends she can find on the shelf at the left of the single window.

A shattered mirror is believed to cause seven years of bad luck, as the mirror is supposed to be the image of the soul. The soul that has been shattered with the mirror will only regenerate every seven years according to an old Roman legend. The seven years of bad luck can be avoided by burying all the splinters of the broken mirror in the ground or by picking up all the broken pieces seven hours after they've fallen to the floor (the easier solution, she observes, since one doesn't always have the time and the inclination to dig a hole).

Mirrors need to be covered when someone dies in the same room, for the devil can use the mirror to trap the soul of the dying person.

A few mirror legends explicitly mention death. A mirror which falls from the wall and breaks on its own means the inevitable death of one person. Looking at your face in the mirror in candlelight means seeing the spirit of a person who has died...

There is also a connection between the mirror and one's soul mate: Eat an apple in front of a mirror, afterwards brush your hair, and the future husband's image will appear above your shoulder in the mirror's reflection.

Perhaps she should have eaten an apple and brushed her hair while they were still in the mansion... And now that she hasn't done it, she will never know what would have happened if she had, for there is not enough time left to turn back. There is also too little time left for regrets and doubts, as the snowflake on the locket at her wrist has turned another sixty degrees. Another fifteen minutes have passed, but Shinichi and she have yet to find the second mediator.

 _*snow* *snow*_

 _*snow* *snow* *snow*_

Saki—mischievous short story author, unapologetic dandy, and local celebrity—whom she can watch through the single window of the library, is still doodling into his notebook with an antigue silver fountain pen. Shinichi, who has been running around talking to all his informants while she has remained in the library to collect the historical information they need, is trying to reason with Saki, as she can see from her spot. They thought it was practical to save time by splitting tasks, but perhaps she should have talked with Saki while Shinichi leafed through the books since Shinichi doesn't seem very successful.

"I'm done here," she says into her headset. "What's happening at your place?"

"Nothing, alas. He only wrote, 'Show me an English rose!'"

Shinichi has appeared beside her after climbing two flights of stairs in a few seconds. Either he is more frustrated than he sounds, or he has gone up to her for a specific reason.

"Why do you want my rose?" she asks, indignant. She isn't going to give up her Tamingo Folly unless it's absolutely necessary. "There are plenty of Darcey Bussells in the nearby garden!"

Named after an acclaimed ballerina, Darcey Bussell, with its medium-sized deep crimson rosettes and fruity fragrance, is considered the perfect English rose. Stealing a rose from a private garden can't be a serious crime considering they're trying to destroy an evil organization.

"He didn't want it," Shinichi says, mysteriously leaving out the reason why Saki has refused the flower.

It takes her a moment to realize what he is getting at.

"A beautiful woman with the natural, unpainted look was called the 'English Rose'," she thinks aloud. "When Saki asked you for an English rose, he could have meant a person..."

"I think that Saki is 'Munro'," Shinichi says, "and he doesn't want to talk to me, he only wants to talk to you."

 _*snow*_

 _*snow*_

 _*snow* *snow*_

 _*snow*_

6.

 _*snow*_

 _*snow* *snow*_

 _*snow* *snow*_

 _*snow*_

The two of them are now standing at the inactive fountain in the small public park adjoining the city library, facing the famous "Saki", who is dressed in an impeccable black cutaway, polished leather shoes, and a medium-sized black top hat, wielding an antique silver fountain pen like an elegant but deadly weapon.

"Are you Munro?" she asks Saki while Shinichi tells the short-story author that he has brought him the English Rose.

"Are you Snow-White?" scribbles Saki alias Hugh Munro in his notebook (on page 3), and demonstratively holds out the note to Shiho.

Obviously, she isn't, but since she needs the information only he can give her, she doesn't mind playing along.

"Yes, I am."

"No, you aren't," Munro writes on page 4. His notebook is expensive enough to feed a worker's family for a month, but the second mediator doesn't mind wasting paper.

"He isn't easily fooled," Shinichi comments.

"Maybe _you_ should do this," she suggests as she puts on the black wig, which doesn't manage to cover all of her waist-long hair. "Just apply the lip rouge! You wouldn't even need a wig to convince him."

The mental image must terrify Shinichi, as he doesn't dare to offer any repartee for her remark. "The wig suits you," he only says (meekly, reassuringly) after she is done.

"Am I Snow White now?" she asks Munro. "Or do you expect me to wear lip rouge as well?"

Munro starts another new page in his notebook.

"You're not Snow-White. Who are you?"

"Maybe I'm the stepmother or one of the stepsisters!" she quips, wondering whether he has a sense of humour unlike the first mediator.

Page 5 answers her question.

"Wrong answer," it says. "Please try again."

 _*snow*_

 _*snow* *snow* *snow*_

 _*snow* *snow*_

"Are you Snow-White?" asks page 3.

"Yes, I am."

She has tucked all her hair in so that no reddish-brown lock will show underneath the black wig, applied the lip rouge made of cochineal insect, which tints her lips a bright carmine, and painted her brows black with the powdered charcoal she recently purchased from a city merchant. She is impressed by how the ebony-black hair and coal-black eyebrows bring out her pale skin and bright eyes. But Munro, unimpressed by her new striking looks, only shows her page 4.

"Maybe he doesn't expect you to say 'Yes'," Shinichi ponders.

Shinichi might be right. Hence she tries again.

"No, I'm the Queen."

"Or the Prince?" Shinichi suggests.

"Oh shut up!" She turns to Munro, who hasn't bothered to comment. "Why am I not Snow White? Aren't I beautiful enough?"

She doesn't expect to receive a serious answer to her question (who would be beautiful enough to be Snow White?), but she is curious about Munro's reply since local informants claim he is famous for his witty repartee.

"Beauty has nothing to do with this," he writes on page 6. "You have one last chance. Please pay more attention!"

 _*snow*_

 _*snow* *snow*_

 _*snow* *snow* *snow*_

A little flower girl carrying a basket of individual flowers, nosegays, biscuits, and tea, rustles past Shiho, stops, and scampers back to approach Shiho with a beautiful bell-shaped flower. "Angel's Trumpet", the golden flower is called, and it doesn't cost money at all. "Just a hug" and maybe a few pennies for a lonely girl on the night before Christmas Eve. The beautiful lady can't refuse her this, can she?...

The lonely girl gets her hug and her money and Shiho gets her Angel's Trumpet, which smells heavenly.

"Take care, Rose-Red," the girl says, pouring Shiho a cup of tea to fight the cold. "And don't forget that the dwarf will always stay ungrateful!"

"Rose-Red?" Shiho echoes before she turns to Saki again. But contrary to his words, he doesn't give her a last chance. Instead, he jumps on a nearby brougham and drives off, disappearing soon behind a thick curtain of snow.

"What's wrong with him?" she complains as Shinichi and she helplessly follow Saki on foot, keeping an eye out for vehicles they can rent or steal. "I thought he wanted to speak to us!"

"Maybe he was afraid of a trap since you gave him a wrong answer twice," Shinichi suggests. "And then the flower girl showed up and gave you a hint so that he couldn't know whether you were the right person or just a spy."

"He didn't write 'Snow White', by the way. He wrote 'Snow-White', with a hyphen between 'Snow' and 'White'. Weird guy!"

Shinichi groans.

"Dammit, I couldn't guess! Munro expected you to say you're Rose-Red, Snow-White's sibling."

"Does the hyphen really make a difference?" she asks in irritation, wondering what fairy tale he is talking about. "After all, it's either 'Kai' or 'Kay'—just different spellings of the same name."

"Not in the case of 'Snow White' since there are two in fairy tales, who are usually distinguished by the hyphen." Shinichi sounds unduly amused by her bewilderment. "You can look up 'Snow-White and 'Rose-Red' later if you want. I think you'll like the story since it's one of the few fairy tales in which sisters aren't rivals... Or you can just shoot Saki for his nasty riddle after we've tracked him down."

 _*snow*_

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After passing several narrow alleys dimly lit by sewage lamps, they enter a shady neighbourhood, where they both have to shoot armed robbers so that the streetgangs wouldn't follow them but stay with the bodies (that are robbed of all the things of value—including their corpses, which can be sold to hospitals and academies for medical research). Shinichi is always in front of her, always too fast to catch up with; but even now that their main objective is to track down Saki, Shinichi pauses from time to time to check whether she can follow.

They find a coachman about to transport cherry laurel leaves to the rubbish tip, who agrees to help them tail Saki for a generous amount of money. Thus they're sitting together in the fragrant pile of laurel leaves now—she reading in the guide on the living conditions of the working classes in the Victorian era and he watching the streets for any trace of Saki's brougham like a hawk.

"Women had started working to support their families financially so that they could no longer cook during the day, but eating out was affordable. The working class had dry bread, onions, milk, and meat except for beef, which they could enjoy only seldom. A typical breakfast consisted of bread smeared with dripping and lard, accompanied by a bunch of watercress... (Not fancy but probably healthier than the sugar and refined carbs kids get in their cereals nowadays.) On the bottom of the social ladder, however, things looked less bright: People in the slums only lived on bread, gruel, and broth made from boiling up bones. The poorest didn't even have a stove and lived on a pot of tea during the day and a stolen apple or a few mushrooms they've found for dinner."

"Doesn't sound worse than nowadays when they have to survive on cup ramen and sleep in internet cafés or 'coffin apartments'," Shinichi heartlessly comments.

"Depends on where you are... I'd prefer the Japanese internet cafés and 'coffin apartments' to the Victorian slums." She wrinkles her nose at the photos of Victorian slums, where cracked plastering, rickety staircases, hole-ridden floors, and dilapidated roofs can cost you your life if you forget to watch every step you take on the way home. To make matters worse, the basement storeys of the buildings were filled with fetide refuse. "Contemporary Japan is at least cleaner than Victorian London."

"I prefer the Victorian slums," Shinichi says. "I'd hate the dirt as well, but having so little space would drive me insane."

The hint of annoyance in his voice piques her interest. He must be thinking of something more personal than Japanese internet cafés and the slums of Victorian London.

"How have things been for you in the new apartment?" she asks. He has recently moved into the centre of the city; and the new apartment, while luxurious and reasonably spacious for Japanese standards, can't be compared to what he was accustomed to while he was still living in his parents' mansion.

"It feels tiny—I barely have space for all my books. But it's nice to have one's own place. I needed a little privacy, I suppose, and time alone to come to terms with... things."

The pauses in his speech tell her it's better not to delve too deeply into those "things". Hence she focuses her attention back to the snowy streets, looking out for the second mediator while wondering who "the dwarf" the flower girl mentioned is.

 _*snow*_

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She has been enjoying the drive through the suburbs and the countryside when suddenly the first symptoms of poisoning occur. Headaches, nausea, palpitations, restlessness, hallucinations... She has begun to see murderous silver bees instead of snowflakes and even pulled out her knife to slash at them.

"What are you doing?" Shinichi asks, incredulous. "Don't slash randomly into the air like that! You're going to kill our coachman!"

"Something is happening to me," she states, matter-of-factly. "I think I've been poisoned. I only wish I knew by what."

After consulting the guide, they learn that emerald green was also called Sheele's Green, Paris Green, or Vienna Green. The Victorians loved emerald rooms. Wallpaper made with Sheele's Green was deadly, especially when it was rotting and the mould growing on it emitted a garlic-scented odour, for one ingredient of the chemical dye is copper arsenite, which contains arsenic. Emerald green was an extremely popular colour in Victorian times. Even sweets like sugar leaves were coloured with it, which killed many children.

"Arsenic was everywhere, wasn't it?" Shinichi grimly frees her of her emerald ballroom dress and her corset while the coachman complains about arsenic fumes in the air. "Your old dress isn't the warmest or the prettiest, but at least it won't kill you."

She has stuffed the emerald ballroom dress and the corset back into her satchel, but her hallucinations won't stop. Since her health rapidly declines and she also has difficulty breathing, she gives Shinichi all her weapons lest she shoots at him while he promises to take care of the situation if an attack should happen.

"I wonder what I'll see when I die," she ponders. "Will I be seeing little angels with golden trumpets instead of bees? Or will I arrive at the hive and meet the Snow Queen?"

"Angels!" Shinichi exclaims. "You haven't looked up Angel's Trumpet yet, have you?"

Angel's Trumpet, the lovely golden bell with a gorgeous scent, didn't only adorn many a breakfast table in Victorian times but was also sometimes taken in the tea, whereupon it caused a psychedelic trip, which was enjoyed by many people. The result is an alkaloid-induced central nervous system anti-cholinergic syndrome accompanied by symptoms like delirium, hallucinations, fever, and memory disturbances. Severe intoxication with Angel's Trumpet will lead to flaccid paralysis, convulsions, and eventually death.

"The flower girl probably thought she was doing you a favour with the tea," Shinichi remarks. "A free LSD trip for the nice lady! Maybe she takes the Angel's Trumpet in her tea on a regular basis."

"I don't care what she wanted... I don't appreciate it!" After tossing the poisonous flower, Shiho resigns herself to the fate that she is really going to die unless they can find a solution to this problem as soon as possible. "Is there an antidote against it?" she asks, whereupon Shinichi says he is already searching for it.

"You need an injection with physostigmine to reverse the effect. I'm trying to figure out where to get it." He hesitates. "But to be honest, I think we're barking up the wrong tree. I'm not feeling well either, and I'm starting to get headaches. It can't be only the Angel's Trumpet since I didn't drink the tea!"

The coachman, too, is complaining of nausea and headaches, which is why they have to stop at a sacred spring to rest, refresh themselves, and figure out how to continue. This often happens to him on the way to the rubbish dump, the coachman claims. Usually a rigorous wash with the sacred spring water and plenty of rest will suffice, but his heart hasn't been very strong lately.

"Do you often drive cherry laurel leaves to the rubbish dump?" Shinichi asks. And it dawns on her that they both have overlooked the obvious in their distraction.

It turns out that the cherry laurel leaves, which have been stored in a heap for a long time, indeed give off cyanide fumes, and they have to stop at a farm to bath, change clothes, and rest for a few nights before they can continue their journey.

 _*snow* *snow* *snow*_

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Forty-five minutes have passed according to the locket at her wrist, which she has scrubbed with French soap to get rid of the cyanide contamination. The wig has survived the wash as well although the ringlets will have to be formed anew with a curling iron (a task for which she has plenty of time at the moment). Shinichi has sent for an antidote, and the Professor will do his best. But until it arrives, they will have to kill time at the farm.

Victorians loved long flowing locks, as Shiho learns from the guide while curling the black wig's natural hair. The long hair was seldom washed but only powdered and frequently brushed with a soft natural bristle brush. After being washed and cared for once in a few days or even weeks with toilet soap, rum (for oily hair), or tea (for less oily hair) and egg yolks (for nourishment), rosemary (for the shine), and vinegar (to balance out the hard water)—without the detergents in modern shampoos that strip the scalp of its natural oil, the hair could go for longer between washings without appearing too oily—it was curled on rags before it was left to dry at the fireplace, or the curls were formed with a curling iron. Many a woman burned her hair (and part of her scalp) on the iron that has been heated at a candle or on a stove. Natural hair wigs were popular for the women who could afford them.

In contrast to the Georgian era, the Victorian era considered a wig a shameful deception or a preposterous display of vanity, and wigs were only used to conceal beauty flaws like a burned scalp or even baldness, a visual symptom of syphilis. Usually, only the hairdresser was aware that a client had been fitted for a wig—high-quality natural hair wigs were masterful creations intended for a lifetime of deception. A retired Victorian wigmaker told the story of a girl whose mother had shaved her head and given her a blonde wig to make her more attractive to suitors, whereupon the girl wore the wig for life and arranged in her will that after her death, the hairdresser should come to her and dress the wig before anyone (her husband included) could find out that her hair wasn't her own.

The stay at the farm would be more pleasant if the farmer and his family didn't mistake Shiho's occupation for the eldest profession in the world (they've asked her whether she was a dancer or an actress, or a singer, all of which were professions that weren't more respectable than what they're suspecting). It doesn't surprise her that they believe her to be Shinichi's kept mistress, as lip rouge and painted eyebrows aren't usually seen on the "good girls". She is slightly piqued (whereas Shinichi is amused!) by the misunderstanding, but apart from the gossip and impertinent questions, she doesn't get into real trouble.

At least not before Shinichi returns with a freshly tamed white mare, which—so he claims—will make their journey faster.

What it does is delaying their journey even more, for the mare bites her into her arm, which eventually gives her an infection, right after Shinichi handed her a warm velvet hunting dress he has bought from a traveling merchant. Jealous pets are a pain during any quest. But Shinichi, who loves all sorts of pets, simply can't take the hint and stop collecting them.

As always, corpses follow her partner like an unbreakable ancient curse. This time it's a gruesome murder series, whose victims are all young prostitutes that were once working girls who resigned because they couldn't find a well-paying job in the city. They were the sort of girls that personally talked to men on the streets, the farmer's wife says, not the expensive ones who had company and carriages. And she eyes Shiho with conspiratorial approval, trying to show Shiho that she isn't judgmental about Shiho's life decisions. A girl has got to do what she has got to do to survive. But at least she can be smart about it and improve her natural beauty a bit (there are so many wavers, facial washes, salves) so that she doesn't have to chat up her suitors on the streets, can't she?

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Unexpectedly, the investigation of the murders, which was only supposed to kill time until the antidotes arrived, lead them to Hugh Munro, the missing second mediator. Shinichi has been interrogating the witnesses and studying the evidence with his magnifying glasses while Shiho has been resting at a frozen artesian well, eating baked apples. In the glaring whiteness of the snowy landscape, Saki's black attire has stood out like a crow's feather among white goose feathers (the ones you used for duvets and pillows). He hasn't fled but handed them the antidotes with a written warning that one shouldn't place too much trust in postal services and random strangers. It was easy for him to get hold of the antidotes meant for them; it would have been easy for others to steal it as well.

"Are you Snow-White?" He has shown her page 3 of his notebook again before flashing her a mischievous smile.

"No, I'm Rose-Red." She has taken the antidote in the meantime, which has instantly taken effect. Only forty minutes remain until the explosion, according to the "package", but she is optimistic about the outcome of the quest now that she is healthy again.

"That's the right answer! Now we can negotiate." Munro writes on page 7 before he puts the notebook away. "I wasn't running from you," he says in a pleasant mellifluous voice. "I had to avoid an aggressive business associate." His gesture seems to encompass the murders and the cyanide. "The Angel's Trumpet served as an urgent warning."

The moment he finishes his sentence, he is struck down by a shot, fired by a faraway figure in a deerstalker and an Inverness coat; and Shinichi hurriedly drags the body of the injured man to the safety of the nearby wall while Shiho, hiding behind the well, fishes out her sniper rifle. The weapon doesn't hit anyone and anything, however, which is strange since she can swear her aim is accurate. The attacker escapes in the snow; and Shinichi instantly dashes after him, leaving her with Munro.

The dying man urgently grasps at the hem of her hunting dress; and when she kneels down to touch him, he hands her a small piece of expensive paper. "...I must let you know that my favours cost a great deal of money," says the blood-smeared snippet of the letter in French. The sentence has been cut out with a scalpel or a knife with a very sharp blade. The paper is visibly expensive and the handwriting feminine.

 _*snow*_

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	2. Second Part

Disclaimer:

This _Detective Conan_ Christmas fic is not by Gosho Aoyama.

 **Ninety Minutes of Snow**

 _by FS_

 _for Grandpa, who wished for "snow" ;)_

* * *

 **II.**

 _7._

 _*snow*_

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"Where are you?" Shiho asks after informing Shinichi that Saki is dead and that all they have are a piece of paper.

"In the red light district. I'm still following the person in the deerstalker and the Inverness coat. Do you know what their clothing style reminds me of?"

"Sherlock Holmes?"

"Jack the Ripper."

"Weren't the Inverness coat and the deerstalker Sherlock Holmes' trademark?"

"The deerstalker was Sidney Paget's idea... You know the illustrator of the Sherlock Holmes stories in _The Strand_? The deerstalker was never mentioned in the canon although it was mentioned twice in connection with the Whitechapel Murders."

"Wasn't there a famous pastiche in which Watson discovered that Jack the Ripper was Sherlock Holmes' alter ego?"

" _The Last Sherlock Holmes Story_ by Michael Dibdin. But it depends on how you read it, from Sherlock Holmes' view—in which case Moriarty has set Holmes up as scapegoat—or from Watson's view—in which case Holmes _is_ Moriarty, who committed the Whitechapel Murders."

"Prostitutes, red light district, Inverness coat, deerstalker... Seems like we just got a 'Sherlock Holmes versus Jack the Ripper' game forced on us."

"Or a 'Sherlock Holmes _is_ Jack the Ripper' game although I hope not."

The Divine Marie, the greatest attraction of the red light district, is adorned with colourful stained-glass windows depicting flowers and birds and abound with beautiful women of different nationalities in lavish Victorian costumes: huntresses, duchesses, countesses, princesses... The posters on the walls show various hostesses in tasteful, modest, ladylike hunting dresses reminiscent of "Skittles" alias Catherine Walters, known as the last Victorian courtesan, as well as scantily, scandalously dressed hostesses reminiscent of Cora Pearl alias Emma Elizabeth Crouch (or Eliza Emma Crouch), who was one of the most celebrated and most notorious Parisian courtesans. The guide claims that inside the Divine Marie, human-sized antique mirrors and mirror walls catch the light from the stained-glass windows and are also placed in a way which causes them to reflect each other's images ad infinitum—infinity mirrors create an illusion of infinite space in the small boudoirs and corridors. Winter-hardy red and white camellia shrubs and high rose bushes surround the square tower like Sleeping Beauty's castle.

"I lost him here," Shinichi admits when they reunite. "It's impossible to get past the guards unnoticed. I fear the only way to get insider information is to make use of the services of a hostess or to apply for a job... I prefer the latter."

"Don't look at me like that!" She isn't thrilled by the idea, but considering their lack of time, it doesn't take her long to give in. "Good, I can be a waitress for a night. Maybe they also need a new barkeeper."

"They're searching for a guard and a hostess." She can hear the smirk in his voice. "Preferably someone with long black curls."

"All right, I'll be their guard if _you_ wear the wig this time."

"I can't!"

"Whatever, I'll wear it... Let me be a male in my next incarnation!" She puts on the black wig, taking care to place it properly and hide her real hair this time. In the moving water of the river in front of the gate, she can see the distorted reflection of a stunning stranger with long black curls. The new hunting dress also suits her well.

Shinichi peers over her shoulder at her water image just to comment with a heartless "doesn't look like you". But before she can retort that the dashing stranger with the fancy sapphire-blue cape doesn't bear any semblance to him either, a small group of delivery men, who are leaving the Divine Marie, have cut in on her.

"You shouldn't use water as mirror on a windy day! It's said to bring bad luck."

"Why?" asks Shinichi.

"It's an ancient curse from a time when people still used water as mirror: if you see your distorted reflection in the water, you'll die."

Shinichi laughs.

"It's always distorted in rivers! But it's a good tactic to prevent the river banks from being overcrowded with people doing their morning toilet. Thanks for the warning nonetheless."

After receiving two bottles of Chateau Lafite's and a few baked apples, the delivery men are happy to provide Shinichi and Shiho with information about the Divine Marie although they don't know much. What they do know is that the women of the establishment aren't the equivalent of _grisettes_ (working girls who ended up as prostitutes due to the abysmal working conditions in the nineteenth century). They're just hostesses, masseuses, courtesans or geishas, who are free to do with their clients whatever they want to as long as they keep the club alive. These hostesses are working in a semi-respectable, stimulating albeit extremely exclusive environment. None of them has been targeted by the scalpel-wielding maniac who is still terrorizing the cheaper call girls of the red light district. It seems the Jack the Ripper copycat only murders the prostitutes on the streets, poor girls...

Shinichi and Shiho learn that the "poor girls" on the streets are usually the "uglier" ones or, in a few cases, former hostesses of the Divine Marie who hadn't received enough "requests" from the visitors or had cost the establishment too much money. As a rule, these women, who spend more money than they make, will be warned for three times before they're asked to leave. But if they belong to the particularly pleasing and charming girls, they're usually tolerated unless they're so extravagant that they would get the club into trouble.

"Sounds like a normal hostess club, only even more expensive and lucrative than the ones you can find in Japan," observes Shinichi. "Men are expected to leave plenty of money during their stay, and the hostesses are expected to do anything possible to make it happen."

"Sounds sinister! But since the 'favours' of a hostess in the Divine Marie 'cost a great deal of money', this is our cue." Munro was supposed to bring them to the third mediator, but now that Munro is dead, the letter is the only clue they have. "Do you think one of the hostesses knows G. H.'s whereabout?"

"Either one of the hostesses or one of the ex-hostesses. We can only hope it's the former and not the latter." Shinichi doesn't sound hopeful, and Shiho wonders whether it would be better to skip the Divine Marie and watch the less exclusive street prostitutes instead. But since he insists that the man in the deerstalker and Inverness coat can't have left the club yet, their next destination remains the Divine Marie.

 _*snow*_

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"I'm still puzzled by why its name is 'Divine Marie' and not 'Divine Magdalene'. Wasn't Mary Magdalene the prostitute in the Bible? Naming a hostess club after the Virgin is rather ironic."

"Was Mary Magdalene really a prostitute? Opinions on this seem to differ."

"At least she is the only Mary in the Bible who is considered a prostitute in France, and 'Marie' is the French equivalent of 'Mary'."

A few snowflakes resemble tiny silver crystals, Shiho distractedly observes while enjoying the tranquil winter landscape in the garden, where they have to wait for the manager. The sun is still high for this time of day, and the silver snowflakes glitter so brilliantly in the late afternoon light that she has to blink whenever she gazes at them. She is lucky that her long eyelashes catch the silver snowflakes whenever they land on her face. They even hurt a bit and scratch her cheeks when she wipes them away, like small hailstones which the wind hurls into one's face during a hail storm although they're smaller and feathery light.

"Something just got into my eyes," announces Shinichi.

"Some of the icy snowflakes?"

"Probably... Wait a sec! I think I'm injured. These things are pretty sharp. Be careful not to get one into your eyes when you look up!"

The tiny snowflakes or hailstones turn out to be mirror shards, as Shiho and Shinichi discover after studying the ones that are lying in the snow, gleaming silver in the softening sunlight. While Shinichi can't remove the shards that got into his eyes, he is sure he is fine again a minute later. The aftereffects of his wounds are worrisome, however. They might have been only a few scratches on his irises, but the new injuries have changed Shinichi's perception of the world within seconds. The garden looks less beautiful now, he tells her. The roses are all infested with worms. The camellias are all dying. The Divine Marie obviously needs major maintenance. And even Shiho has become hideous all of a sudden.

"You're extremely skinny," he remarks in amusement. "I never noticed before."

"Really slender, you meant to say, with toned muscles! I'm in great shape." She has prepared herself to endure hardships before they embarked on their journey.

"Too thin, at least for my taste. Not womanly at all!"

"I didn't know you're so fixated on curves. Now I know why there are Brazilian butt lifts. People like you are into it!"

"No, I mean you've become _really_ skinny in my eyes," he raises his voice. "And I can remember I didn't find you skinny before... Also, are these pimples on your face?" He even has the gall to laugh. "You're accumulating them at alarming rate. Soon you'll look like a polka-dotted mascot! Is it only me, or can you see your pimples as well?"

"There are only a few red spots!" she exclaims in disbelief after inspecting her reflection in the stained-glass windows. "My skin must have reacted to the damn carcinogenic cosmetics and the poisonous dress I had to wear because you wouldn't wear them, idiot! Now stop whining about my looks since the manager is coming!"

 _*snow*_

 _*snow* *snow* *snow* *snow* *snow*_

 _*snow*_

The manager, Peirce Coward, is a hazel-eyed giant with square spectacles—a two-storey, double-winged building of a man. Strong jaw, square face, not at all attractive in a conventional way but intelligent-looking and memorable.

"I'm Beast!" He meaningfully winks, indicating the rose on her cape. "And you are?"

"I'm Beauty!" Even though Shiho knows the mirror splinters in Shinichi's eyes are distorting his perception, it's difficult to be confident when your own partner claims that you look horrible, and it takes her some effort to deliver the phrase the third mediator expects from her with the necessary conviction and nonchalance after Shinichi's comments.

"Do you have something for me?" the manager asks.

Shiho likes his warm and soothing voice, but there is a tense glint in his eyes, which prevents her from showing him Munro's piece of paper. Hence she presents him the Tamingo Folly on her cape instead, which he studies in barely concealed disappointment that quickly fades into disinterest.

"I don't need your rose," he sighs, and then, as though he had suddenly remembered how to be gallant, gently adds, "the flower suits you much better than me."

Her skin will need special treatment, he informs her on the way to his office (on which they're escorted by four guards), and she will need an appointment with their make-up artist since she doesn't look like she knows how to apply make-up by herself. The dentist of the house can bleach her teeth for her, which are naturally white but not white enough for the requirements. Pretty as she is, she doesn't need cosmetic surgery even though her nose bridge isn't high enough and her eyes look too sharp and alert to be conventionally beautiful. If she decides to get cosmetic surgery, he would recommend a nose job (to make her nose more delicate) and an eyelid surgery since her eyes are double lidded but the lids are small compared to the size of her eyes. All in all, he likes her very much and adores the irregularity of her features, which gives her oval face a distinctive look, but he isn't convinced that many customers will share his opinion of her in view of the strong competition she is going to have here.

"Seems like I'm quite pretty but not pretty enough," she can't forbear saying. "I'll get this job nonetheless, won't I?" The snowflake pattern on the locket has turned about two hundred and forty degrees. Almost sixty minutes have passed in their universe. She doesn't have time to dither over this deal.

Shinichi snickers at her remark. How she wishes she could just kick him!

She gets the job—either because the double-winged building is looking forward to seeing her face when she gets fired or because he is curious about how she will adjust her attitude when she has to deal with customers. The club attracts an exclusive and loyal clientele—he informs her, redundantly—and she is expected to treat them with the utmost care and respect. Stroke their egos, massage their bodies! Don't give them too much but also not too little! Just create and sustain the illusion that they're the most fascinating people in the world, however dull they are, and that she is head over heels in love with them, and all will be fine...

"'There, where you are not, there is happiness.'" She has become distracted by the lyrics of a song, written in blue ink with a broad-nipped calligraphy pen and set in a broad silver frame, which is hanging on the tapestry-covered wall behind the manager. "Who has written this?"

"I don't know." He shows no surprise at her rapid change of topic. "It's from a Schubert song. A wanderer, disillusioned by love and by the world, is wandering on, looking in vain for happiness and peace after having his heart broken."

"He will be wandering and searching forever with that attitude."

"Like so many of us." The manager smiles. "But that's only human." He directs her attention to an oil painting near the door, which depicts a lone figure on a jagged cliff. Around the cloaked figure, enormous waterfalls are cascading down the snowy mountainside. "It's very relatable, isn't it? Since the Boss loves it, someone painted the Ungrateful Dwarf to illustrate the piece."

"It might as well be the Reichenbach Falls!" she remarks. "Calling it 'dwarf' is rather misleading."

"Don't you know the tale of Snow-White and Rose-Red? The two good-natured sisters keep rescuing a dwarf with a long beard, but the dwarf will always stay ungrateful." The manager's long fingers trace the magnificent waterfall below the cliff. "This waterfall resembles a long beard, doesn't it? Hence the cliff is called 'Ungrateful Dwarf'. It's forever stuck because there are no Snow-White and Rose-Red to cut it free."

 _*snow*_

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After signing the no-strings-attached employment agreement to work as a guard and a trainee Victorian hostess of the Divine Marie for one weekend (the establisment is going to provide the rooms, the tools of the trade, and the food during the unpaid trial period), Shinichi and Shiho follow the manager on a tour through the Divine Marie. Since it's dinner time, they have the chance to witness several festive activities. In a lavishly furnished, chandelier-lit dining room, a black-haired beauty with long black ringlets is lying on a silver plate, completely naked apart from an opulent string of black pearls that alludes to Cora Pearl's trademark necklace. In another room, on the stage, another hostess is covered in diamonds from head to toe, parodying Blanche d'Antigny, who once prompted a critic to write, "This is not an actress we see on the stage before us but a jewellery store."

Shiho doesn't need long to decide that she will be a hostess à la Catherine Walters, the athletic, natural type that will share recreational activities and be a good confidante. After seeing the Cora Pearl lookalike, she is glad she isn't going to work at the Divine Marie for longer than a weekend. Inevitably, most women will feel pressured to take lovers after a few months since attracting enough interest to cover their expenses in the Divine Marie must be impossible without securing loyal clients who consistently leave a handsome sum.

Shinichi, mistaken for a customer by the women in the establishment, has been chatted up by a few hostesses, some of whom haven't lost interest in him after learning that talking to him won't earn them money. Thus his new friends, a tayuu and a demi-monde, accompany Shinichi, Shiho, and Coward wherever they go and give them insight into the matters Coward doesn't know.

"It's smart to choose a late Victorian courtesan," the tayuu, an Asian girl with an intricate hairdo, whispers into Shiho's ear. The thick white make-up of a tayuu is incredibly destructive to one's health. Seven layers of kimono, made of open-weave ramie, brocade, silk satin, or velvet—all hand-painted or hand-embroidered with floral and water motifs and landscapes! Tall wooden clogs in which only slow, showy figure-eight steps will be taken! Who has invented all these elaborate torture devices? At least a tayuu receives luxury clothing and bedding from her patron as proof of his commitment, but not even the lavish gifts can make up for the hardship she has to endure.

"Do you know why the house is named after Mary the Virgin out of all people?" Shinichi asks the blonde demi-monde. "I thought it would make more sense to name it after Mary Magdalene."

"It's not named after Mary the Virgin but after a nineteenth-century French courtesan who died of consumption. I was told she had been immortalized in a famous novel, but I've forgotten which one."

There are only two well-known nineteenth-century French courtesans who fit the bill. The first is Blanche d'Antigny, born Marie Ernestine Antigny, who had initially yearned to spend her life in a convent but became a courtesan due to life circumstances and a series of impulsive choices. After the death of her mother's beneficial employer and the subsequent plunge into poverty, Marie Ernestine was pulled out of her convent school and began to work as a salesgirl at a draper's shop. At fourteen, she got herself drunk during a night out at the Closerie des Lilas, eloped with a young Romanian lover she met that night, left her lover to join a band of travelling Romani gypsies, and left the band, which mistreated her, for new lovers, first a Romanian archbishop and then a Romanian prince.

"She was a busy fourteen-year-old!" Shinichi comments.

"Less busy than you, I bet, considering how many cases you must have tried to solve at fourteen."

Despite her great social success as the Romanian prince's mistress, Antigny was so homesick that she left the prince to return to France, her native country. Then Antigny began her acting career although 'acting' is a most unfitting word, Shiho informs Shinichi while skimming the article on Marie Ernestine Antigny in her guide. "Blanche d'Antigny's spectacular debut began with the role of Helen of Troy's statue, which can neither move nor talk."

"She probably matched the beauty standards of her time. I gather that's when her career as courtesan started?" Shinichi asks, gazing over Shiho's shoulder at the guide, which, since they entered the Divine Marie, has taken the form of a grey parrot, whose feathers begin to shimmer in all colours whenever Shiho consults it for information.

"Apparently. Antigny was also the model for Paul Baudry's painting _The Penitent Magdalene_ despite being anything but penitent about her job. Seems like she had an exceptional talent for keeping still."

"Maybe Victorian men liked women who didn't move and women who kept their mouths shut," Shinichi suggests.

"They're not that different from contemporary Japanese men in that respect, aren't they?"

"You're brutal, as always!"

Since Shinichi moved out of his parents' mansion, he has fallen into the habit of prompting her to react in a certain way and then teasing her for the very action he has triggered. While Shiho doesn't know how to feel about the sudden changes to their relationship, she feels she shouldn't deprive him of this harmless quirk when there are very few things which can make him happy.

"No, I'm extraordinarily kind. When have I ever been mean to you?"

Since he can't think of an example, he only offers a few weak Uh's and Oh's.

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Émile Zola based his novel _Nana_ on Blanche d'Antigny's bizarre life although, in contrast to the calculating protagonist, Blanche d'Antigny was naive (not to say stupid) to a fault. She suffered from postcoital exhaustion and often fell asleep after work, whereupon a few of her customers slipped away without paying her. To solve this problem, she allegedly sewed her customer's nightshirts to her dressing gown—an effective and unorthodox but also ridiculous solution to a fairly simple problem...

"I doubt this is the Marie we're searching for," says Shinichi, who must have reached the same passage in the guide. But Shiho, curious about how Blanche d'Antigny's life ended, insists on reading the feathers of her guide and guardian. They have told Coward&Co that they had to use the bathrooms. Hence they're now hiding in one of the luxurious orchid-laden, lavender-scented bathrooms together, reading about Blanche d'Antigny's adventures while listening to the splashing of an artificial fountain and to bird songs, which are meant to drown out possible embarrassing bathroom sounds.

"Callias, the journalist, reported that d'Antigny's departure to a tour to Baden caused a traffic jam in the Rue des Écuries-d'Atoirs because she brought thirty-seven coaches of dresses and hats!"

There are two known endings to Blanche d'Antigny's life, and perhaps neither of them are true. In one ending, she fell ill with typhoid fever after a tour to Cairo and died, lonely and broke, deserted by all her old friends although she had been an extremely generous employer to her coachman and her maid. In another ending, she left her wealthy patron to be true to Luce, a tenor at the Follies Dramatiques, whom she was madly in love with. Their happiness didn't last long, for Luce died of consumption after two years of cohabitation, leaving Blanche with a tuberculosis infection she must have caught from him and in poverty into which they had fallen after she had cashed all her jewellery and spent all her savings to finance their life together. A fellow courtesan, who took pity on Blanche, let Blanche stay at her place until Blanche's untimely death. In either versions, Blanche d'Antigny, still young and beautiful, died of consumption and was immortalized in Émile Zola's _Nana_ and Paul Baudry's _The Penitent Magdalene_ although neither of the works captured her true spirit.

"See, here we have the tuberculosis and the wig, which could have been part of a theatre costume. Two of the clues Brummel left," Shiho says although, like Shinichi, she is sceptical about the idea that this blonde airhead, no matter how remarkably energetic and adventurous she was, will lead them to the person that sent the Great Hail.

The other (far more intelligent Marie) who fit the bill was Marie Duplessis, born Rose Alphonsine Plessis into a family of impoverished Norman peasants—the great celebrated French courtesan who was immortalized by Alexandre Dumas in _La Dame Aux Camélias_... _The Lady of the Camellias_.

"Lady of the Camellias. This must be her!"

This Marie, or rather Rose, was born into a violent household. Her abused mother was said to have abandoned her to her violent and perpetually drunk good-for-nothing father, who sold her to a variety of men so that she already lost her virginity at twelve. After living with one of these men, while working in a dress shop in Paris, she grew into a distractingly beautiful teenager and decided that becoming an independent _grisette_ financed by patrons would be a better career.

Living with a series of students, Rose Alphonsine quickly learned to read and write. When she became the first well-kept mistress of an aristocratic lover, Count Ferdinand Monguyon, she acquired aristocratic manners and began to call herself Marie Duplessis—an elegant name reminiscent of the Virgin. Her affair with her next lover, the young Agénor de Guiche (the future Duc de Gramont), was strongly opposed by Agénor's father, which would later form the plot in Verdi' _La Traviata_ (the opera over whose ending Julia Robert's _Pretty Woman_ character wept, touching Richard Gere's icy heart).

The affair ended badly. Marie, who was sent away, had a baby with Agénor that died after a few months. Agénor de Guiche, pressured by his family, got married to a woman of less lowly birth, and Marie realized that she had to move on.

Several famous and powerful lovers followed, Count de Stackelberg, Franz Liszt, Édouard de Perregaux... Marie Duplessis was one of the most celebrated beauties of her time, the Snow White of the courtesans. Her portrait by the painter Édouard Viénot shows an ethereal girl with dark hair, pale skin, red lips, and dark eyes. A bouquet of camellias was her trademark. People went into the opera just to see the beautiful lady with the camellia bouquet.

The literary critic Jules Janin admired Marie's "young and supple waist, the beautiful oval of her face and the grace which radiated like an indescribable fragrance". Alexandre Dumas (A. D. fils, the son—not A. D. père, the famous father who wrote _The Count of Monte Cristo_ ) described that she was "tall, very slim with long, black, lustrous hair, Japanese eyes, very quick and alert, with lips as red as cherries and the most beautiful teeth in the world". She looked "like a little figurine made of Dresden china".

Franz Liszt wrote that she was "the most absolute incarnation of Woman who ever existed". That "hers was a truly enchanting nature, and practices generally thought to be corrupting—perhaps rightly so—never corrupted her soul".

"She was highly intelligent, possessed a library consisting of over two hundred books, went to operas and concerts, danced and conversed with great minds of her time, who were all impressed by her."

Not a heartless Cora Pearl or a cruel Marquise of Paiva, or an airheaded Blanche d'Antigny but a modern female entrepreneur, a victim of social injustices who had turned her situation around. A smart lady who always enjoyed life to the fullest despite the heartache it has brought her. Coco Chanel, inspired by _La Dame Aux Camélias_ , turned her trademark white camellia into a recurring symbol in her designs. After Verdi's _La Traviata_ , the story of the lady of the camellias inspired several movies depicting a courtesan with a heart, one of the most well-known in the Western world is _Pretty Woman_.

"Does the guide say something about _La Dame Aux Camélias_?"

"It's a short novel written by Alexandre Dumas fils after her death, which was later turned into a play. Dumas seemed to have rushed back to Paris to see her, but she passed away before he came. Their affair ended over a year before her death. Interestingly enough, he wasn't her patron but she tried to support him financially, which he didn't want her to do."

She must have loved Alexandre Dumas to some extent since he was her poor "amant de coeur", whom she wanted to support instead of being supported, but she didn't love him enough to give up her lifestyle. The great love of her life seemed to have been Franz Liszt, who befriended her after his long-time affair with the Comtesse Marie d'Agoult ended. For about three months, Marie Duplessis and Liszt were almost inseparable. For unknown reason (perhaps to elevate herself to the status of a countess to make Liszt, who was attracted to her but not madly in love with her, adore her more), Duplessis travelled to England and married the Count Édouard de Perrégaux.

"What a weird reason to get married!" Shinichi gloomily comments. "Even my reasons were better."

The marriage was valid in England but not in France, and the couple separated instantly. Marie returned to France and begged Liszt to take her with him to the concert tour he had begun shortly before her wedding: _Take me, take me to wherever you want. I shan't be a burden to you. During the day I will sleep. In the evening I will go to the theatre. At night you can do anything you want with me..._

Liszt left Paris in the spring of 1846 after promising to return to take Duplessis to Constantinople—a promise he didn't keep. In order to forget him, Marie continued her glittering social butterfly life, enjoying herself thoroughly and enormously, more than she had ever done before.

 _I have loved sincerely, but no one ever returned my love. That is the real horror of my life_ , Marie confided in her maid. _It is wrong to have a heart as a courtesan. You can die from it._

She indeed died from it, as she had already been suffering from tuberculosis and no longer made a serious effort to maintain her health although she (half-heartedly) continued her search for a cure. It was probably Dr. David-Ferdinand Koreff's cure, a high dose of strychnine, which killed her in the end. David-Ferdinand Koreff was a society doctor, "half charlatan, half genius", the guide says. Marie was unlucky not to have encountered the genius but the charlatan.

"This is definitely the Marie we're searching for. Black-haired beauty, camellias, consumptive chic. Also, Saki has given us a piece of a letter she must have written to a suitor."

The Lady of the Camellias might have possessed a childlike innocence and a heart, but she was no airheaded, naive victim. A red camellia meant she was sexually available, white meant she wasn't. On four days of the month she wore a red camellia, to the public's great interest. She was also shrewd when it came to collecting her fee: a woman who wrote this letter wouldn't have sewn her dressing gown to the nightshirts of her suitors like Blanche d'Antigny:

 _Monsieur le baron, I realize that mine is a sordid profession, but I must let you know that my favours cost a great deal of money. My protector must be extremely rich to cover my household expenses and satisfy my caprices._

"It's not only the letter, it's the _Wanderer_ as well," Shinichi remarks. "I've just looked it up since I remembered it when I heard Liszt's name: there is a Liszt transcription of Schubert's _Wanderer Fantasie_ for orchestra and two pianos. The _Wanderer Fantasie_ is a piano piece Schubert wrote after writing the song _The Wanderer_ , whose lyrics were written by Georg Philipp Schmidt (von Lübeck), by the way."

"A transcription of a piano piece inspired by a song inspired by a poem... A hostess club named after a courtesan whose real name isn't even Marie but Rose Alphonsine. Our red thread seems to have started long before the organization was founded. At least we've found our Snow White and Rose-Red in one person. What are we going to do now?"

"After solving this Jack the Ripper lookalike case, we need to find the modern equivalent of Marie Duplessis. I don't know who it is but I know where to start," Shinichi smugly asserts.

"Where?" she asks.

"With the most successful host or hostess in the world of course, who is, coincidentally, the owner of the Divine Marie."

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According to the title page of a fashion magazine Shinichi spotted in Coward's office, Hyoga Fuyuki, the owner of "the lucrative Victorian hostess club Divine Marie", is the world's best-dressed and best-paid gigolo. He is also the most reclusive, possesses no social media presence, and is known to donate a large amount of his income to art schools and orphanages. Although Fuyuki's name can't be found on the list of the Organization's associates, gossip columns online claim he has been seen with the famous actress Chris Vineyard twice (while leaving a cemetery and entering a black limousine) and that both of them had been wearing Victorian clothing.

When grilled about her fancy ball dates with Fuyuki, Vineyard informed the reporters that Fuyuki was seeing a reclusive friend of hers and that she had only accompanied the pair as her friend's "lady-in-waiting". Vineyard's comment was generally regarded as a self-deprecating joke—but since a purely platonic date night with Fuyuki costs his female clients about 300000 USD, journalists were extremely interested in the identity of the elusive "friend", who didn't have to pay him.

"Except that no one has ever found out who this 'friend' was," Shiho states in satisfaction. "This must be the person we're looking for."

"Hmmm," Shinichi only comments. He has become withdrawn and taciturn, which he blames on his new distorted perception. The people are all bland, the establishment dingy. The lighting is always either so glaring it hurts his eyes or so dim he has to squint. Instead of priceless antiques, he can only see shabby old furniture in need of replacement. Instead of graceful geishas, he can only see ghostly white masks. The eternal snow and the dying winter roses and camellias outside are just as irritating and tasteless as the infinity mirrors and the decaying old tower.

As his vision declines, his patience with other people's follies is wearing thin, as evidenced by their talk about Marie Duplessis.

"Do you have an idea why no one returned her love?" Even Shinichi, who is still seeing a twisted version of the world, has to admit (after a glance at one of the portraits offered by the guide) that Duplessis "must have been", "at least in the eyes of her contemporaries", "almost beautiful".

"I don't know, but if her coachman's claim that she drank nothing but champagne at the end of her life was true, I'd say people like her are difficult to love. They want the best, and they claim they've given their all, but what they've given is nothing compared to what they want for themselves."

"I wouldn't put her into that category... It's natural to be pragmatic and materialistic if one had grown up so poor."

"It's not only pragmatism. She tried to attract Liszt by turning herself into a 'proper countess' even when it meant to marry de Perrégaux, who was just a tool for her. Love was always about comfort and appearances, money, fame, status—all ornaments and no substance. And then she was surprised why none of those loves were sustainable in the long run."

But comfort is an important aspect of love—Shiho points out—especially to a woman who can't survive independently. Duplessis was too delicate for the labour struggles of her time—uneducated, unprotected, and unmarried but also "unrespectable"—and she was impecunious. She must have yearned for independence and love, but finding both and surviving in reasonable comfort was impossible.

"Oh, she certainly had her chances, maybe more than once, after she became a courtesan and armies of lovesick men would gladly have ruined themselves for her. Dumas loved her enough to stay away from her for the sake of his sanity and to write a novel about her after their relationship ended."

The short entry on Alexandre Dumas fils, which they've found in the guide, seems to have made Shinichi partial to the writer. In Shinichi's view, Dumas never got over Duplessis' death: "I can't imagine he spent the rest of his life writing against prostitution just because he wanted to milk the topic for all it was worth."

"Oh, but maybe he did, since he had been poor as well and fictionalizing her death had made him famous and rich? Besides, you can't fault her for not giving up her lifestyle for him! Perhaps he just wasn't the one." Shinichi's astonishing lack of empathy has begun to grate on Shiho's nerves, especially since she can't be sure whether it's only a side effect of the mirror splinters in his eyes or whether this is his real, spoilt character speaking.

"Can anyone be 'the one' for her? With the exception of Liszt, the most celebrated and best looking pianist of his generation? People like her destroy themselves and all the people near them in the process. They overlook all the good things in life in their neverending quest for the best."

"She probably didn't want a traditional Victorian marriage."

"I didn't think of a traditional Victorian marriage," Shinichi sighs in annoyance, "and I don't know what really happened between Dumas and her or Liszt and her. But if I had a girlfriend who went abroad to use someone else and then returned to me within months as if nothing had happened, I'd have rejected her as well!"

To a person who has never been weak, the workings of Marie's mind must seem unfathomable. To Shiho, who has grown up without parents, it's easier to comprehend the urge to cling to a safety net. She once found solace in her special position within the Organization just like Marie found comfort in a courtesan's lifestyle with its social recognition and great luxuries. It took her long to recognize that the Organization's love and attention are but glittering snowflakes—fluffy, cold things that dissolve the moment you hold on to them.

The guide even has an illustrated edition of _La Dame Aux Camélias_ by Alexandre Dumas fils, complete with a postscript containing a farewell letter from the author to his real-life Marguerite Gautier:

 _My dear Marie,_

 _I'm neither rich enough to love you as I should like nor poor enough to be loved as you would like. Let us forget each other then—you a name which must leave you practically cold, I a happiness that I cannot afford._

 _Useless, it would be useless to tell you how miserable I am, since you already know how truly I love you._

 _Farewell! You have too much heart not to understand the motive of my letter and too much intelligence not to pardon me._

 _A thousand memories,_

 _A. D._

Marie hadn't replied to the letter, which wasn't the last from Dumas she would receive. He wrote to her again a year later, from Spain, and offered to come to her if she let him when he learned that she was seriously ill. But Liszt had already occupied her thoughts while Dumas was largely forgotten, and she might also not have forgiven Dumas for the breakup.

Love is never returned in the same way it was received, and a love letter could be easily written while a lifetime of disgrace and poverty, both of which Marie knew well, was less easy to endure. At some point in time, after she was sold by her father, after she lost her baby, or after she was abandoned by de Guiche, a few splinters of the devil's mirror must have got into Marie's eyes. And there the mirror splinters that freeze people's hearts by twisting their perceptions must have remained for a lifetime.

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At night, Shinichi and Shiho split up to investigate the Divine Marie: she sounds out the hostesses on the Boss and the Jack the Ripper copycat while he socializes with the other guards and inspects the rooms. Since Shinichi has discovered various deerstalker hats and Inverness coats in the cellar, where the guard's costumes are stored, the serial killer must be hiding among the customers of the club, or one of the employees at the club must be the serial killer they're hunting.

"All the girls _he_ killed once wore artificial black curls," one of the hostesses informs Shiho. "That's why most women in this club have stopped wearing black wigs although they're the latest fashion craze..."

"Maybe it's the weird painter who sketches only the black-haired Victorian hostesses," a geisha claims. His sketchbooks were full of morbid drawings. "Women without limbs, such things..."

"I remember there was a theory that a well-known painter was the real Jack the Ripper, but there is no definitive proof..."

Many people still believe Walter Sickert to have been either Jack the Ripper, an accomplice of the Ripper murderers, or a prankster who had written a hoax Ripper letter, the guide informs Shiho. Ripper or no Ripper, Sickert was intensely fascinated by the subject like many other of his contemporaries. Psychopathic serial killers, egomaniacs who are unable to feel either empathy or guilt, have always caught the public's imagination.

Most victims have indeed been former hostesses of the Divine Marie although a few of them were only trainee Victorian hostesses who didn't stay for longer than a weekend. According to what Shinichi has learned from his informants, no wig has been found at the crime scenes, but it's true that many victims had been seen wearing a black wig only days before they were attacked. Two of the women have survived but are still wounded and traumatized. Rumour also has it that a few girls who are missing must have been thrown off the Ungrateful Dwarf, but there are no bodies to confirm this theory.

While Shinichi is trying to match his findings on the latest crime scene to the clues he can detect on the deerstalker hats and Inverness coats, Shiho, who is investigating the hostesses' quarters, begins to ponder the possibility that Shinichi will never get rid of the mirror splinters. Despite the clear, moonlit winter night and the comfortable lodgings, the world around her appears less beautiful now that she knows he can no longer enjoy it. A sense of loneliness is lingering in the crisp filtered air inside the Divine Marie like a pervasive, sickly smell, dulling her perception of the world although she doesn't suffer from the effects of the devil's mirror.

She has been inspecting the mirror on her vanity table (and assuring herself of its innocuousness) when a strange sound outside her window catches her attention and she is suddenly alert. It sounded like an eerily satisfied sigh, she realizes—the kind of sigh Gin used to give when he finally found the victim he had been stalking.

A rustle of leaves is followed by a loud thump, and the peaceful night explodes in a cacophony of sounds as two shadowy figures wrestle on the ground. Shiho, hiding behind the damask curtains, has drawn her pistol and aimed before she even considered shooting, but then she reconsiders and gives a warning shot into the air.

The two people pause for a moment, long enough for the larger figure to overwhelm the smaller. Peirce Coward, whose impressive size makes him instantly recognizable to Shiho, then proceeds to hit and strangle his opponent with ear-shattering, animalistic screams.

"Stop it!" Shiho shouts and shoots again, this time barely missing Coward's shoulder. "Hands up! Both of you!"

A third silhouette emerges from behind a camellia shrub, looking the very image of Sherlock Holmes with his Inverness coat, deerstalker hat, and sharp profile. Taken by surprise, Shiho instinctively aims her pistol at the deerstalker hat, but Shinichi's voice stops her in time.

"Why are you dressed like that?" she exclaims in frustration, but she admits that right now they don't have time for idle talks. Coward's opponent has successfully managed to free himself and escaped (ninja-like) by climbing over the high wall.

"It's the serial killer!" Coward cries, gesticulating wildly in the air in his despair. "Why didn't you just shoot him when you had the chance to do so? He was trying to kill you!"

Shinichi, less prone to temper tantrums, has dashed after "Jack" despite Shiho's protest that they should go together. Hence all she can do is throw on her cape again and follow Shinichi and the Jack the Ripper copycat to the Ungrateful Dwarf while Coward gathers his men.

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Although she knows she had better focus on her surroundings, Shiho can't help but wonder why the serial killer has been targeting the former black-wig-wearers of the Divine Marie. Does he deem them imperfect and thus inadequate—a mistake he must erase? Is the deliberate (or even inadvertent) impersonation of the "divine" Marie Duplessis a sin in his eyes? Who is the last mediator?

Time is running out, says the snowflake-shaped locket around her wrist. There are only twenty minutes left until the explosion. Afterwards, their only chance at uncovering the earliest history of the Organization will be forever buried. This is a gamble—she tells Shinichi over the microphone. They might make it in time if the serial killer knows the third mediator's (or G.H.'s) whereabout, but all will be lost if "Jack" doesn't have anything to do with G.H. at all.

He has already contacted Coward and made an appointment with Hyoga-san, Shinichi assures her. "Hyoga-san is the last mediator; and Coward was supposed to bring you to him—but Coward wasn't sure whether you were the right person or not because you didn't show him Munro's paper scrap."

"They've used me to bait 'Jack'!" she exclaims, hit by an epiphany. Usually she isn't this slow, but her worries about Shinichi and the cyanide poisoning must have clouded her mind.

"Well, of course." He laughs—a rare sound, which prompts her to smile with him. "As decoy, they needed a black-wig-wearer who could defend herself; otherwise they would have had to wait for too long for 'Jack' to strike again now that the hostesses have stopped wearing black wigs. You've passed all the challenges on the way, but you were too suspicious. Since you decided not to show Coward the paper scrap, Coward held back as well and chose to watch you in secret instead of letting you in to their scheme."

"And why are you dressed like 'Jack'? I almost shot you!"

"It's the bodyguards' outfit during this year's musical soirées. A former Victorian hostess is going to perform five Chopin's waltzes on Sunday night. The event is called 'Minor Keys'. I've received a note that all personal bodyguards are encouraged to try on their clothes beforehand so that the costumes can be fitted in time."

He should have informed her about the note but preferred to remain silent before arriving at a reasonable deduction. His lack of communication almost cost him his life. Since she is sure he is aware of this, she makes an effort to let it go.

"Just tell me about these changes the next time so that I won't shoot you by accident! Anyhow, our serial killer isn't one of the guards, claims Coward. He can't explain how 'Jack' got past all the security checks without anyone noticing."

"If 'Jack' is the 'colleague' Munro referred to, 'Jack' must be one of the crows. Either we're dealing with a rogue crow and G.H. will thank us for catching him, or Munro and Brummel are the rogue crows and G.H. will welcome us with an equivalent of the biblical great hail."

 _Thank us for catching him_... One thing about Shinichi never changes: even when he suffers from the mirror splinters in his eyes, he stays so sure of himself that Shiho has to take on the task of worrying.

"Where are you now?"

"Almost at the top of the Ungrateful Dwarf. There is only one path, and it's impossible even for our ninja to climb down this cliff without passing me."

"Wait for me! And when you approach him, take care to stay within my line of sight." Now that she has time to think straight, she is glad that Coward, who stopped her at the gate of the Divine Marie when she dashed after Shinichi, insisted that she take a few weapons with her.

"Why?" Shinichi chuckles. "You can't hit anything, anyway."

Bear with him, he is affected by the mirror splinters, she keeps telling herself. She will save the bullets for the killer even though Shinichi is within her line of sight now. Soon he will arrive at the top, where "Jack" will be waiting. And it will be hard for her to shoot the killer when she isn't on high ground.

"I didn't have the best field of fire! I didn't have a spotter! Windage should have been factored into the shot as well, but I didn't have enough time to—"

"Or it's your sniper rifle! Let's just hope the weapons Coward gave you will work."

She crankily reminds him that she checked her rifle before leaving and that she never lost sight of it until they encountered their Jack the Ripper copycat. The only two occasions in which she did lose sight of it was when she was poisoned by the cyanide emission of the laurel leaves and when she stayed at the farm to recover. But Shinichi had been carrying the sniper rifle during both occasions... Unless Shinichi was careless, no one could have meddled with it.

"It's a mystery I have yet to figure out," Shinichi admits. "But I don't have time for it now."

Shinichi doesn't need to explain why he doesn't have time, as she can hear the stranger's resounding voice through her headphones even though what he is saying gets muffled by the falls. She is as fast as she can make it on foot, but Shinichi, who has reached the top of the cliff, is hidden from her view.

"So you've murdered so many innocent women just to get me?" Shinichi asks, conveying to her the gist of what the stranger is saying without drawing the stranger's attention to her presence. "Fine, I'll be this world's Sherlock Holmes if you're this world's Moriarty."

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Shots are fired, but they don't seem to accomplish anything. Set on destroying their respective nemesis, Shinichi and the stranger proceed to hit each other with sticks. When Shiho finally arrives at the top of the Ungrateful Dwarf, she can see them fighting in the distance. Shinichi is using a walking cane which looks suspiciously like George Brummel's. He must have either found it on the ground or wrestled it from the serial killer.

Shinichi's opponent uses another walking cane, which reveals itself to be a swordstick. She can't tell where the killer has found it since she is sure he didn't carry one while fighting against Coward in the Divine Marie.

Hiding behind a large boulder, Shiho begins to set up a shot with the new sniper rifle she received from Coward—but the two men resemble each other so much that she is no longer sure whether the one with Brummel's stick is Shinichi or the serial killer. Even their movements are perfectly alike, resembling the identical movements of two agile feline predators more than those of two human beings with easily distinguishable quirks and human imperfections. She hesitates for a brief moment before she gets the idea to scrutinize the scarves the men are wearing through a spotter's scope. Even in the bright moonlight, it's difficult to spot the rose petals on his red silk scarf, but once she has seen them on the person carrying Brummel's stick, she feels better about her choice when she lines up the shot.

"Did you change your scarf when you changed clothes?" she asks nonetheless. She doesn't want to distract him, but she can't undo her actions once she has pulled the trigger.

"No." It has taken Shinichi a moment to reply, and he couldn't go into details like "I didn't see any use in changing it", but the answer suffices. On second thought, she could have asked Shinichi whether he was the one wielding the sword cane or not, which would have saved them plenty of time, but she has no time for regrets. After warning Shinichi, she shoots at the ground behind "Jack", and Shinichi propels him off the cliff with a well-aimed hit of his cane.

The serial killer's story doesn't end here, however, and he is now hanging at the edge of the precipice with the help of a small grappling hook he has kept hidden in his sleeve. Shinichi is towering over him with an outstretched hand. Both men's deerstalkers have fallen off during the fight; and in the moonlight reflected in the snowy landscape, Shinichi's hair is as dark as ebony while his skin appears as white as snow...

"Don't!" Shiho warns Shinichi as she darts out of hiding to run to his aid, arms opened wide to the sides to keep her cape out of the way while she is running. "Remember what Coward said about Snow-White and Rose-Red and the ungrateful dwarf! Don't rescue him!"

"Sometimes there is no choice," Shinichi calmly responds as he kneels down to help his opponent. "Sometimes you just have to follow your instincts and hope for the best to happen."

Everyone has a fatal flaw—she realizes—and Shinichi's flaw is that he is too kind for any world he is living in. Despite the mirror splinters in his eyes, even if they reached his heart and he turned to ice, he will always succumb to this weakness. She can't make him act against his life principles. Hence she can only watch as their enemy pulls himself up with Shinichi's help and then—using the advantageous momentum—flings Shinichi over the precipice while he straightens himself and mischievously cocks his head to throw a glance at the falls below.

 _*snow* *snow*_

 _*snow*_

 _*snow*_

 _*snow* *snow* *snow*_

* * *

A/N: Muphrid-grandpa says this fic is like kudzu, it keeps growing and growing. He is right since it has become much longer than planned. o_O To prevent it from turning into a novel, I've collected the short chapters and divided everything I've written into two main parts. The third part will be the last.


	3. Third part

Disclaimer:

This _Detective Conan_ Christmas fic is not by Gosho Aoyama.

 **Ninety Minutes of Snow**

 _by FS_

 _for Grandpa, who wished for "snow" ;)_

* * *

 **III.**

 _7._

 _*snow* *snow*_

 _*snow*_

 _*snow*_

 _*snow* *snow* *snow*_

Do anything in haste and repent it at leisure! Running out into the open despite knowing that not even Shinichi could shoot Jack was a grave mistake, but there is no option to take back what has been done. Shiho has drawn a gun and also shot at her opponent, but it looks like her guns will be more useful for hand-to-hand combat than for shooting.

All she can hear through the headset is the crash of the waterfall. No sound of assurance from her detective. He had better have an excuse for this! She gathers he must be stuck somewhere above the waves, according to the noise, which forces her to turn down the volume of the transmitter.

Her immediate problem—Shinichi's doppelgänger, who is strutting towards her with a haughty smirk—effectively distracts her from her worries. Fear, anxiety, and—she doesn't want to linger on this thought—grief can wait. After the initial moment of stunned inactivity, her thinking brain fires up (once a crow, always a crow!), rapidly devising schemes to overpower her overpowering enemy.

"So _you_ are Moriarty," she states. "And you've murdered so many women just to set a trap for Shinichi. What a waste of time and resources! You could have found him more easily."

She will pique his curiosity by insinuating that she has overheard the talk between Shinichi and him, thus stall for time until Coward&Co arrive. If "Moriarty" doesn't only look like Shinichi but also shares a few of Shinichi's character traits, his curiosity will be his downfall.

"Moriarty, Mr Hyde, the Shadow, Medardus' half-brother, Dorian Gray's painted image—names are of no use to me! More important is what I am, and what you are, and what those women aren't. Who is the villain in our story, 'Rose-Red'? Is it me, who eliminates the trolls and defends the law of this universe? Or is it you—an intruder who would do anything to uncover the truth even if it means to destroy the world we're living in?"

"You're the Night Baron!" she exclaims, realizing how he could have slipped through the defenses of the intelligence services. In this case, the right name makes all the difference. It explains why she can't use certain weapons when he is in her vicinity. "I've been warned: you can take on the appearance of any being you wish. You can also manipulate your surroundings at will."

He beams, delighted that she has recognized him at last. Rather than curiosity, vanity has proven to be his true weak spot. She can get out of this seemingly hopeless situation if she utilizes this knowledge well.

"How did you learn that we're here?" she asks. No one has talked—Brummel must have slipped and paid for it, as evidenced by Brummel's cane, which Brummel couldn't have given up voluntarily.

"The moment you two entered this universe, I knew who you two were. We've always been prepared! I knew Itakura would never have left the game behind without creating a hole for rats like you to sneak through."

"And why haven't you showed yourself immediately instead of stalking us?" She hasn't noticed his presence, and she is sure Shinichi hasn't either although, in retrospect, she mistrusts the landscape and the animals Shinichi and she have encountered on the road—the bears and wolves, crows and eagles… She even begins to suspect the Organization's eyes behind the camellias and the roses and the eternal snow.

"Why, indeed." He purses his lips in contemplation. "Hope, or curiosity? I gave you a chance to understand. I'm still giving you a chance, Rose-Red! You can return to us after a small proof of loyalty, just enough so that we know you can be trusted."

"I've received and declined the same offer before."

"Alas, it seems you haven't learned from experience."

"In this respect, I've always been stubborn."

"Then you leave me no choice but to ask you how you want to leave this world. Would you like to disappear quietly, without a trace? Or do you prefer Coward to find your corpse so that you will be buried and the church bells will toll for you?" The Night Baron bows. "Just tell me and I'm going to accommodate your request. You can die beautifully, dramatically, grotesquely… Whatever floats your boat is fine to me."

"I'd rather die another day."

"Then I'll decide, and it will be the hard way!"

They've been circling each other, and he has been edging her towards the cliff by encroaching on her space with every step he takes. She knows she wouldn't stand a chance in combat, but on the ground she has spotted Brummel's cane, which Shinichi left on the cliff when he fell. She has to use his gift wisely, for one wrong movement or even the right movement without impeccable timing can end in a catastrophe.

"Before that, you can at least tell me what 'G. H.' means," she suggests as she takes another furtive step towards Brummel's cane, "unless you're afraid that I could use the knowledge against you." She only needs one second of inattention from him to succeed; and then she will see whether her guess about Brummel's cane is right or wrong. If it's right, she will be saved. If it's wrong, the cane is still better than nothing.

"This isn't how things work!"

Disappointingly, the Night Baron doesn't take her bait. But luck is on her side, for Coward's silhouette has emerged in the east with the first pink tints of dawn. The shot Coward fires momentarily distracts the Night Baron although it doesn't hit him—the bullet must have disappeared the moment it entered his orbit. That one moment, however, lasts long enough for Shiho to sprint for the cane and snatch it from the ground during a quick sideways roll.

Since her memory of Brummel is still vivid, she only needs a fraction of a second to locate the hidden knob at the handle. A small explosion propels The Night Baron high into the air, where he disappears like a star at sunrise while she is sucked into a portal which the cane has opened for her. Coward swiftly follows her into it before the door to the outside world closes. Behind him, the Ungrateful Dwarf, whose "beard" has been cut since the explosion has caused a rockslide changing the course of the old falls and creating a new waterfall, disappears behind a thick wall of snow.

 _*snow**snow*_

 _*snow*_

 _*snow*_

 _*snow**snow*_

 _*snow*_

A loud flap of wings and a crow's raspy, harsh signature call announce the first mediator's presence. A second afterwards, Beau Brummel comes around the corner and elegantly struts towards the small side alley where Coward and Shiho are standing. Brummel extends his hand and Shiho automatically places the cane she is holding into it. Without his cane, the man will always look incomplete.

"I see you've found the third mediator," Brummel acknowledges. "A thousand thanks for returning my cane to me! My madman of a colleague would have killed me if the Boss hadn't interfered. The Night Baron has been dangerously paranoid and irascible these days, perhaps because the secret services have been causing us serious trouble."

"So _you_ are the third mediator?" Shiho shoots Coward a reproachful glance. "You lied to Shinichi on the phone about this—why?" Realizing that this might be part of the test, she chances a guess: "Is G. H. Hyoga-san? What does the acronym mean?"

"It stands for 'Grandpa Holda'—the Boss is very particular about shaking out his wool beddings and pillows. I was afraid you would run from the Divine Marie the moment you learned that the Boss was G. H., hence I preferred to wait until we could talk face-to-face."

Shinichi is still missing—she tells him, taking his explanation that 'G. H.' stands for 'Grandpa Holda' with a grain of salt—she needs to find her companion first before she can proceed.

Time will run out soon, Brummel reminds her—though he agrees that finding Shinichi is important if they both are to make it out of this world unscathed. How about meeting up with the Boss first so that she can be freed from the "package" in time—Coward suggests. It wouldn't help anyone if she got blown up after they found her friend, who must be stuck in one of the rocks' crevices if he is still alive and well.

"To avoid gossip, the Boss isn't going to see you at the Divine Marie but is waiting for you in a hotel at the moment. I can bring you to him when you're ready."

She isn't ready yet, and she will never be ready before Shinichi has been found! Who knows what's happening at Shinichi's place—if he was only stuck in one of the rocks' crevices, he would have given her a sign by now!

She is shocked by the hysterical tone, which no longer sounds like her own. But now that the adrenaline of the last minutes has ebbed away, it's impossible to control her panic at Shinichi's disappearance. For the first time since Shinichi and she embarked on their journey, Shiho can feel the cold and the exhaustion—the growing wall of despair which hunger, thirst, and pain have built up without her notice. In this rundown alley, sandwiched between Brummel and Coward, she is suddenly aware that she is utterly alone in this alien world—disconnected from the strangers around her and the one person she has regarded as her closest friend and companion.

"I couldn't say anything without alerting 'Moriarty'," says Shinichi's voice at her ear. The crash of the waterfall has faded away, replaced by a faint clink of crockery and piano music. While she was worried sick, wondering how he was doing, Shinichi was preparing for the perfect cuppa; and now he is going on and on about the nifty blue teleporter in the hidden cave behind the platform where he had landed after "the jump"…

"I'm at Hyoga-san's place at the moment." He had intentionally let himself be flung down the cliff, having spotted a small platform underneath it when he tried to help his thankless enemy—Shinichi explains to her. A skilful salto in the air and a grappling hook (the Night Baron isn't the only one who values this powerful weapon) have kept all his bones intact even though he is nursing a few superficial injuries which will easily heal.

"Snow-White and Rose-Red had to rescue the ungrateful dwarf by cutting his beard, whereupon they were rescued by the bear, who turns out to be a prince. It seems Hyoga-san and Coward are the two men the sisters will marry in the end. Hence our next goal is Hyoga-san's hotel suite in the most cosmopolitan district of the city."

"Why did _you_ get the most popular host in the world while I had to make do with Coward, the club manager?" she asks into the headset, whereupon Coward shoots her a puzzled frown. "Why did _you_ get the prince?"

"Because I'm Snow-White, noble and self-sacrificing," Shinichi chuckles. "I deserve the best!"

"So entitled all of a sudden, huh? The next time you disappear, I'm not going to worry about you! I'll just go ahead with whatever I'm doing because not even hell's door would open for you if you knocked at it!"

"You've said this so many times," he reminds her, "I can't remember how many!"

"I'll write it down then, so that I'll be prepared the next time you do something stupid without informing me!"

 _*snow*_

 _*snow*_

 _*snow**snow*_

 _*snow**snow*_

 _*snow*_

The hotel where Hyoga Fuyuki is staying during his short impromptu holiday, which he has taken for them, is called "Consolation" after Liszts' _Consolations_. The music welcoming Coward and Shiho into the large nineteenth-century French suite, on the other hand, is unmistakably Chopin.

"Farewell" is a waltz in a major key—says the tall man who lets them in as he shakes her hand in greeting. It may sound too bright and happy to be a goodbye present for a former fiancée after a breakup, but sorrow isn't always expressed in tears, not with Chopin.

Hyoga Fuyuki, while as classically handsome as expected, is also less conspicuous and flamboyant than expected. Although he looks his part of the quintessential Victorian dandy with his expressive soulful eyes and his lush, slightly wavy dark hair in a traditional moderate close cut, he isn't wearing any piece of jewellery. His striped wool morning coat, despite fitting him perfectly, is also less extravagant than the clothes she has seen on the mediators and the customers of the Divine Marie.

"Does a host of your calibre ever suffer during a breakup?" she asks Hyoga, matching his casual tone. "Have you ever fallen in love?"

"Only once. When I realized that it would never work out, it took me a whole year to focus on work again. I'm glad that it's over, though—love causes too much pain."

"Who was that person?" she asks, intrigued by the disarming smile which has lit up his eyes. He is still starry-eyed at the remembrance, as if the memory of it has remained vivid in his mind even though it no longer hurts him.

"There was one customer—we used to take afternoon walks together to the frozen lake, where we would sit on a blanket and listen to the musical soirées from the Divine Marie. She would always weave lies into her 'true stories' and then, when I reproached her, claim that white lies brighten teeth."

She had the most charming laugh and was intimidatingly frank; and while she had never seemed aggressive or bitter, she gave the impression of someone who must have been extremely considerate once but snapped after accommodating others for too long. One hears many horror stories about embittered, spiteful female customers from other hosts—there was one customer who would throw up on the floor and dare an impecunious host to eat her vomit for a six-figure sum. There are plenty of them—disappointed housewives, frustrated single career women, victims of abuse who couldn't deal with their past, also a few natural sadists who would pay a fortune for a moment of absolute power over a man. But Marie wasn't like them…

"She called herself Marie?"

"The name she was born with was 'Rose', but she preferred being addressed as 'Marie'."

"In imitation of Marie Duplessis?"

Hyoga darts Shiho an amused glance as though her question was a good joke he had never heard.

"She called herself 'Marie' after the Virgin—'Marie' sounds purer than 'Rose'. Now the world only remembers Marie for her style and her wit. It has completely forgotten that she also supported fellow courtesans and financed orphanages."

"In case you haven't noticed: Hyoga-san is talking about the real Marie Duplessis," Shinichi, who has just poked his head out of the adjoining cabinet, joins Hyoga, Coward, and Shiho at the small breakfast table. "Whether we can believe the story that Marie Duplessis was resurrected and founded the Organization is up to us."

Shinichi looks slightly different from usual—or rather his looks haven't changed but his attitude has. Something about him resembles the Night Baron even more than before. It must be the cold efficiency with which he leads her to the two silver candelabra on the tea table and, after removing the camellia-shaped silk candle shades, takes her hand and holds her wrist over the flickering fire.

"This will deactivate the bomb," Hyoga, more attuned to Shiho's needs than Shinichi is despite meeting her for the first time, explains. "It won't help you remove the bracelet—for this, you will have to find Marie."

During breakfast (which consists of buttered rose-shaped bread with ham and cheese, Camembert, berry jams, muffins, apple juice, coffee and tea, and a Peach Melba as dessert) Hyoga tells Shiho and Shinichi that Marie vanished a few months ago. These disappearances are normal—she will reappear when she feels safe. She likes to mingle with people without being recognized, and sometimes she prefers to withdraw into the Hive for a few months or even a year.

"Where is the Hive?"

"You can't find it without her." It's not a place you can walk to or teleport to, even Brummel's cane won't open the portal to it. Shiho doesn't try to press Hyoga since she knows he is telling the truth. Although it has been years since she enjoyed the privilege, she can still remember the private portals.

"The tea is fantastic today!" Coward, who, displaying impeccable Victorian table manners by taking a sip of the hot tea without blowing at it, exclaims. "Nothing like the fake I tasted the last time I came here!"

Faking tea is, regrettably, a common sport in the nineteenth century—the guide, who was absent at night but emerged on Shiho's shoulder when Coward mentioned tea, informs Shiho and Shinichi. Low taxes on tea and the expansion of tea plantations in India during Queen Victoria's reign had made tea affordable to all social classes; and Anne, the Duchess of Bedford, turned the afternoon tea into a social event.

Dinner, usually served between five and six o'clock in the Georgian era, had been moved to seven o'clock or even later in the Victorian age—Hyoga-san tells Shiho when she asks him about the tradition of the afternoon tea. And since there was no lunch or only a very small luncheon, toasts, cakes, fruits, bonbons, and other confectionaries taken during tea time between four and five o'clock would fill the gap between breakfast and dinner. Queen Victoria, who had been invited to the Duchess' tea afternoons, enjoyed them and discovered that she could host tea parties as well to reconnect with the world. After the death of her beloved husband, she was so depressed that she withdrew from the public for years and needed practice to socialize with people again.

Not only the idle rich enjoyed tea parties—the poor bought their sweetened tea from street vendors. Unscrupulous crooks sold dried recycled tea leaves or worse, elder, ash, or sloe leaves, which were coloured with logwood or verdigris upon drying. Tea became so popular that it replaced ale as the favourite British beverage. Workers even began to demand their tea break—tea was a serious business in Victorian Britain.

Times change but people don't—Shinichi observes. Nowadays we have fake food and beverages as well; and internet access, once gratuitous, has become a necessity or even a right in many countries.

Workers work less but complain more—Cowards says. Sometimes they're right to complain, sometimes they're wrong, especially when they're so hopelessly lazy and incompetent that it's a curse to have them. Good workers are a dying species. But what can one expect from people who haven't learned anything but the luxuries the world has to offer?

"Whenever people are poor and badly brought up, standards slip until the situation escalates so much that an opposite movement forms," Hyoga remarks. "It's an age-old circle."

"It has nothing to do with poverty," Shinichi coolly states. "It's stupidity, weakness, and entitlement! It's the good life which spoils most people, not poverty."

"Truly good people are rare," Hyoga points out. "And with a few exceptions, good people are made, not born."

"Perhaps the good life just brings out the true character of a person," Shiho muses. In extreme circumstances, most people are insufferable.

"No, it's the extreme circumstances which bring out the truth," Shinichi counters. "Most people are insufferable when one gets to know them—that's something I had to come to terms with, as much as it hurt!"

In the end, they agree that—while one shouldn't expect too much from humans in general—a moderately good life without existential problems makes the majority of people more pleasant, less inclined to prove themselves (or entertain themselves) by torturing fellow humans. And a good life for people who otherwise wouldn't have it—so Hyoga claims—was his aim when he founded the Divine Marie. Staff are employed according to their talents and their motivation, not according to an education they had to pay for in advance. The work is moderate, just like the pay. The charming, good-looking women and men can work as hostesses and hosts if they want to while others, depending on their interests and vocations, will be trained to become guards, cleaners, managers, clerks, artisans, cooks, cosmeticians, artists, and musicians. There have been quite a few problems not only with the hosts and hostesses but also with the patrons and the police. But all in all, he is satisfied with the establishment, which is better than many other clubs out there.

"So you mean the police officers—both of whom are dead now—lied when they reported that the Organization exploited the employees by taking their papers and belongings, forced the hostesses to prostitute themselves, and murdered the agents who discovered that the Organization's host and hostess clubs are linked to drug cartels?" asks Shinichi.

They've entered the last phase of their journey, whose outcome will decide over whether Shinichi and Shiho can return with the information they've gathered on the Organization's founding days or whether they will be forever stuck. One police officer, who had tried this odyssey alone while staying on voice chat with a friend, managed to deactivate the snowflake bomb. But afterwards, he suffered arterial spasms and froze to death despite sitting in a heated room.

Contrary to her expectations, Hyoga stays pleasant. He doesn't even seem offended by Shinichi's implicit accusation.

"I know of other hostess clubs affiliated with drug cartels—though they've become fewer in the last decades as the Yakuza lost their influence—and there are even more clubs exploiting young people who can't afford an education. The Divine Marie isn't doing either although I'll admit that those police officers must have been shot by a codename member who could no longer stand their blackmail and their harassment. The police has black sheep as well, as you must know."

They had come to the club refusing to pay, bothered and groped the hostesses and almost raped a geisha during her late-night walk. They brought "trolls" who applied for a job but then, after being employed, did their best to ruin the soirées of the Divine Marie. In any world, there are people who can't play the game according to its rules, who get off on ruining something beautiful. Some of them do it out of spite and envy, others do it for entertainment. In any case, Hyoga-san attempted to protect the club by paying them off while intimidating them with threats—the carrot and stick approach. Otherwise the police wouldn't have found a connection between those dead officers and the club, as the Night Baron is very thorough.

"Is that the reason why the requirements for the entry have changed?"

No, the rules have been changed long ago—during a time when the Organization grew so much that they had to control the influx of new members. Unsurprisingly, people bring their private issues into this world. Coward is working hard on maintaining the order in the Divine Marie.

"We don't force them at all, and yet they still prostitute themselves," Coward asserts. "Maybe they believe it's expected of them—it's their own sense of competitiveness and their insecurity, which they will never shake off. No one wants to be demoted to cleaning the establishment after she has been a Victorian hostess. Hence many of the girls who feel inadequate try to compensate it with prostitution."

The smarter, more philosophic ones pretty it up by claiming it's for empowerment, for controlling their own body and making use of men's desire for them. Some of them believe it's the job of a hostess as though people would pay so much for sex... People pay a host or hostess for the fantasy and the romance without the mess—the enjoyment of a wonderful night with good food and company and rapport and maybe even education and therapy with only a minimum of the wreckage that people you love leave behind in your life when they go.

The problem may be the establishment itself, Shinichi suggests. The lucrative business with the longing for recognition, love, youth, and beauty.

Perhaps it is—like everything which encourages chasing after an ideal, like literature, fine art, and music. Nothing is good in excess—not even truth and honour and friendship. But what can one do with young people who have no future, who—in a world in which the general level of comfort has risen for the masses so rapidly that what was once considered normal a century ago would be unacceptable nowadays—suddenly find themselves alone without support? He has sincerely tried to give them a chance—Hyoga claims. He has offered the kids money, manners, ideals, principles, and culture—but nothing works if they refuse to take their life into their hands.

In the end, many of them just slip away, as though there was an error programmed into their system in advance. It might be the neglect during their early years, and childhood or teenage traumas and personal heartaches and tragedies later in life will give them the rest until they let themselves go. Knowing exactly what would cause their downfall, they will still succumb to it, committing suicide subconsciously or even consciously. Only a few manage to build a future using the chances they get—and he will keep the club running for those few people.

The job of a host or hostess is rewarding but hard, Hyoga tells Shiho when she asks him what he does for the women who pay him. Life is lonely, and people want to be understood and appreciated. He tries to offer his clients exactly that: time and genuine appreciation. He loves them to a certain degree—to one which doesn't hurt any of the people involved. There are clear boundaries but also freedom—he only chooses the ones he likes. He appreciates and uses all the presents he receives (some women give him expensive cars and helicopters and family jewellery). He always listens to his clients' rants and does his best to satisfy them even when they don't voice their wishes. He works hard on himself—not only on his looks but also his perception, his education, and his taste—and he cultivates a positive approach to life. He helps when they come to him with their personal problems, and he is sworn to secrecy. In a way, a host is also a psychologist who uses romance as therapy—an idea which already arose in the nineteenth century.

People have begun to demand too much from a relationship, Coward muses. Which wife or husband still has enough time and motivation for this exhausting game? What was once a union between wealthy families for economic reasons and safety (and sometimes a mad scheme of a lovesick pair that, willing starve together, eloped) has morphed into an all-you-can-eat buffet. One had to be beautiful enough, thin enough, strong enough, rich enough, intelligent enough, confident enough, social enough, competent enough; and then one also has to love the partner as he or she is, with warts and all, despite not being allowed to have any warts at all. And that for decades, during days and nights filled with life's distractions, chaos, socializing, work, hobbies, malfunctioning electric devices, sick elderly parents, debilitating illnesses and neuroses, maybe one child or two and a pet into the bargain…

"I've heard about your upcoming divorce," Coward turns to Shinichi, offering his consolations. "It must be hard for a detective to spend enough time with his woman."

"Time has nothing to do with it! It's incompatibility and stubbornness on both sides. But I'm over it now."

Shinichi is clearly not over it yet, as evidenced by the irritation in his voice, but Shiho doesn't comment on it, as she has grown tired of thinking (and hearing) of Ran.

"I'm not a woman, and my vision has been lacking recently, so… How is he in your eyes?" Shinichi quietly asks her after Coward has left to look after the Divine Marie and Hyoga has disappeared into the bedroom to fetch the present he wants to give them for the rest of their journey.

"Beautiful," she can't forbear telling Shinichi. "I begin to comprehend why women pay so much for a single date night. It's not only his looks—it's his attitude: his courtesy and tolerance and self control and undivided attention."

Since Shinichi doesn't reply, she asks him how Hyoga looks in his eyes.

"He has a chiselled face but it's not memorable," Shinichi coolly observes. "It's the type of face which doesn't say anything. His personality is the same: it's precisely his lack of a personality which makes him so extremely pleasant. Everything he does and says has been carefully studied and copied from someone else who has a better understanding of the world. Hyoga-san either doesn't know authentic emotions, or he has learned to avoid them when he was very young. When he felt them for the first time as an adult, he was so scared of them he had to kill them off. His lack of depth—a great asset when one needs to let go of people fast—makes him singularly suitable for his line of job. You've heard what he said: Love causes too much pain."

There is something deeply personal in Shinichi's tone of voice, which makes Shiho wonder whether Shinichi has encountered too many smooth gigolos during his cases or whether she has managed to irritate him with her admittance that she finds Hyoga beautiful.

"Do you still find anything or anyone beautiful?" she asks Shinichi when she notices him raising a disapproving brow at a barely visible stain of glue on the embossed leather cover of Hyoga's handbound notebook.

"Snowflakes." Shinichi doesn't even hesitate. "I really like their symmetrical hexagonal shapes."

Shiho doesn't have time to comment on this, as Hyoga has emerged from his bedroom carrying a silver tray with a baked apple, a long-stemmed red rose, and a large onion.

"What would a human life be without a choice and free will?" Hyoga asks, smiling mysteriously as he presents the three gifts to her. "What do you really want? What do you really need? Pick only one thing, please."

Since Shiho still has baked apples and a Tamingo Folly, she chooses the onion, whereupon Hyoga congratulates her to her choice, remarking that it will hurt. It's the first time that his behaviour hasn't made sense to her. And even Shinichi admits that his estimation of Hyoga-san's character was wrong after they've left the Consolation to search for Marie.

 _*snow*_

 _*snow*_

 _*snow* *snow* *snow**snow*_

 _*snow*_

* * *

A/N: I gave in and split the ending since the last part of the story got too long… (This always happens to me. ;_; Don't laugh!)

The ending has already been written and only needs to be edited.


	4. Ending

Disclaimer:

This _Detective Conan_ Christmas fic is not by Gosho Aoyama.

 **Ninety Minutes of Snow**

 _by FS_

 _for Grandpa, who wished for "snow" ;)_

* * *

 **III.**

 _7._

 _*snow*_

 _*snow*_

 _*snow* *snow* *snow**snow*_

 _*snow*_

For self-protection, Shiho is allowed to keep her revolver and Shinichi is allowed to carry a cane (Coward has given him a cane similar to the one the Night Baron has), but all the other weapons are confiscated by the guards when Shiho and Shinichi enter the Divine Marie again. Hybristophilia aside, even normal people seem unduly fascinated with serial killers, especially with serial killers who murder courtesans from an exclusive establishment. A few street vendors have set up stalls selling illustrated articles about the Jack the Ripper copycat, where one can buy souvenirs like Jack the Ripper prints, Jack the Ripper themed travel paraphernalia, courtesan wigs, and courtesan-blood-stained rags.

There are a few articles on the victims, all of them discussing whether the murdered women have made mistakes and were guilty of their own death or whether Jack has a preference for dark-haired women. Psychologists and doctors have been interviewed for them. Scientists also use the opportunity to discuss physiognomy, claiming that one's appearance reveals one's character and that criminals can be recognized by their looks. There are reports on the appalling conditions in public hospitals as well. It seems the hostesses who have survived the attack are now dying in the hospitals, making some revolutionary minds wonder whether hygiene has anything to do with this and whether surgeons should be forbidden to hang their bloodied working clothes—the trophy of a hard working, productive life—openly, competitively, in the hall next to each other. The revolutionary minds cite Dr. John Snow, who had been trying to convince the world that cholera was a water-born disease and had nothing to do with bad smells in 1854, but the miasma theory (bad smells cause illnesses) was still prevalent; and no one wanted to believe Dr. Snow's claim.

Scientific papers, sold with cheap newsprints and serialized mystery novels, also report that not only cholera, syphilis, smallpox, and tuberculosis but also mental illnesses are diminishing the working force. In a few cases, it seems like mentally healthy women have been locked away into mental institutions by husbands who want to get rid of them for some reason. Chronic arsenic exposure also causes mental retardation and psychological impairments among other problems—the guide, now a colourful parrot that resembles a normal parrot more than ever, informs Shiho. Even Napoleon supposedly died of his poisonous Sheele's Green patterned wallpaper…

One always needs an onion for cooking, Shiho reasons in an attempt to overcome her regret over not having chosen Hyoga's rose—a velvety, deep red, magnificent Chrysler Imperial. An onion may be ugly but is a good gift. "A rose doesn't fill one's stomach," she tells Shinichi, who comments with a sneer that an onion doesn't fill one's stomach either.

Upon returning to the Divine Marie, they set out to comb the rooms for a woman resembling the description of Marie Duplessis. There are so many tall, thin, elegant women with cherry-red lips and beautiful teeth that searching for "Marie" is like ransacking a mannequin shop for a special mannequin. Except from the few short ones, practically any of the hostesses could be Marie, Shiho concludes. They've searched all the streets of the city, spent hours in the neighbourhood to sound out street boys, beggars, vendors, prostitutes, even police men (who were despised by their fellow Parisians of the nineteenth century, whose main tool of social and political change were strikes, riots, and revolutions). No one has recognized the lady on the picture they've received from the guide, not even the priests in the churches where she could have been. Marie Duplessis must have altered her looks drastically to protect herself, or she has hidden herself so well that no one can see her.

It's Sunday, and the house is preparing for the soirée tonight. Candelabra and chandeliers are being cleaned, carpets and windows are being scrubbed; hostesses are busy choosing their outfits and their make-up; patrons are calling on their courtesans to ask them which flowers they're supposed to buy… From the vast music hall, piano music can be heard. The grand piano is a Pleyel, Chopin's favourite instrument. The piece, however, is by Schubert and not Chopin.

She has expected them—the lonely flower girl whom Shiho once gave a hug, for she raises her eyes to them without displaying a sign of surprise and only nods in recognition. Under her large hood, which has fallen to the nape of her neck, her reddish-blonde, surprisingly smooth and strong hair (uncommon for natural redheads) is framing her head in loose ringlets; and her eyes are of a deep black—large, witty, quick eyes which are many years older than a girl of her age can have seen.

Marie's doctor, the maverick and charlatan, seemed to have concocted a perfect version of APTX 4869 without knowing it—the guide informs Shiho (it seems like strychnine is the ingredient whose dosage will become extremely problematic in the later versions of the drug; and Dr. David-Ferdinand Koreff himself, who threw all the ingredients together during a manic fit, couldn't recreate the drug again). When Marie died, people auctioned off everything she once owned, her clothes, her jewellery, her furniture (there was a wardrobe seven suitors had saved up to buy so that they could leave their clothes at her place), her books, her letters, her mirrors, even her pet parrot. But instead of remaining dead, she woke up in a shrunk body and escaped with the help of her maid and friend: Judith Bernat, the actress who took the same poison to be with her and who is called Chris Vineyard today…

 _Why have I sold myself?—_ Marie was supposed to have told Bernat— _Because the labour of a working woman would never have procured the luxury for which I have an irresistible need… Despite appearances, I am neither avaricious nor debauched. I wanted to know the refined pleasures of artistic taste, the joie de vivre in an elegant and cultivated society. I have always chosen my friends…_

 _And I have loved. Oh yes! Sincerely loved, but nobody has ever returned my love. It is the horror of my life…_

"The _Wanderer Fantasie_ by Franz Schubert," says Shinichi as icebreaker. "I know little about classical music, but Ran—my wife, well, soon to be ex-wife—got us tickets for a piano recital on our first anniversary."

"I love it!" declares the lady of the camellias. "At first, the wanderlust sounds like a harmless drive to set off—and I couldn't care less about those bland major chord repetitions. But with time, all the angels and demons emerge—and you keep wandering and wandering…" She distractedly collects her scores and books, arranging and rearranging them in no particular order.

"Did Liszt ever perform your favourite piece for you?" Shinichi asks. Perhaps the famous pianist had been forced to play the _Wanderer Fantasie_ for Marie so often that he grew sick of it—and of her.

"As much as I love the _Wanderer Fantasie_ , it's not my favourite Schubert piece. I prefer his final Fantasie, the F-minor for four hands." After thus evading Shinichi's question, Marie playfully flaps the scores of the _F-Minor Fantasie_ like a hand-held fan. "Schubert dedicated it to the countess Caroline Esterházy, his unrequited love. She once jokingly complained that he had never dedicated anything to her, and he replied that it would be pointless, because—"

Marie has abruptly stopped in mid-sentence as though she had forgotten Schubert's reply. She also seems to regret her outburst, claiming that holding a lengthy monologue doesn't agree with her character.

" _What's the point? Everything is dedicated to you, anyway_ ," prompts the parrot, turning silver grey.

"He loved her until the end of his life, despite knowing it wasn't meant to be… Can you imagine receiving a love like his? Of course the poor countess couldn't return it."

"It's easy to love someone until you die if your life is so outrageously short," Shinichi quips. "Schubert died at thirty-one."

"That's true. Modern musicologists believe that Schubert must have been gay or bisexual because he had famous homosexual friends and shared his rooms with one. One musicologist even claims Schubert was a closet gay pedophile, who suffered greatly from his unchangeable preferences—it would explain why Schubert was said to be 'surrounded by darkness' and why he was shunned by his contemporaries. His unrequited love for Caroline Esterházy could have been platonic or just a pretty farce… To each their own!"

She absently leafs through a blue German music book without looking at it, stroking the paper cover with a long, slender index finger.

"Schubert's biography doesn't change anything about his music—it's hard not to hear the futile hope of impossible love in his deceptive cadences. Composers are seldom angels, and yet great art is always divine. But I can see the splinters have finally reached your heart!" She leans in to study Shinichi's pupils with childlike curiosity and zest. "How does it feel?"

Shinichi recoils, looking slightly taken aback.

"I don't feel much."

"I thought so." Marie nods to herself. "It's wonderful, isn't it? The absense of feelings makes one see things so much clearer. One no longer gets lost in the deceptions of one's own heart when it's protected by ice! Whenever emotions cease to be, one's mind will finally be freed."

"The mirror splinters are distorting his perception!" Shiho interjects in irritation. "The whole world is ugly to him now—he can only like symmetrical snowflake patterns. Maybe you should join us and search for a cure since you definitely have a few splinters in your eyes as well!"

Marie darts her a wondering look.

"Are you sure that it's _his_ perception which has been distorted? Or are _you_ the one with the distorted vision, who can only see the world through her rose-coloured filter?" Her gaze roams about the empty music hall, lingering on the many cobwebs on the painted ceiling, the dusty chandelier, the stained velvet seats, the footprints on the red carpet, which no Victorian cleaner will remove. "The mirror splinters don't distort the truth or fail to reflect the good things—they only help you see _everything_!"

"Is that the reason why you've been distributing them?" Shiho asks, staggered by the memory of George Brummel's entrance test and the realization that Marie hasn't been lying to her. "To make people see the whole truth? The ugly details they will always overlook when they're happy?"

Marie vehemently shakes her head.

"I haven't tried to distribute anything! I'd love to put on my own rose-coloured filter again, but I… can't… help it… Once I was so angry at a mirror that I threw it out. It shattered, and the wind carried the splinters away, that's all."

"Why were you angry at your mirror?" Shiho asks, bewildered by Marie's sudden agitation. She feels silly for asking the question, but in this case, the simplest approach is the fastest.

Marie chuckles. In her deep black eyes, a smile flickers up, enough to indicate amusement but not enough to allow easy familiarity.

"I'm not frustrated by _my own_ reflection, if that's what you believe. I've lived for too long to care about irrelevant fluff. But whenever I do my hair in front of a mirror, I see someone else's image. It's very distressing, but I can't look away."

"Whose image?" Shiho asks and, when she notices that Marie is reluctant to reply, suggests in a flash of intuition: "Maybe you should stop gazing into mirrors in candlelight."

"Maybe I should," Marie agrees. She looks distant all of a sudden, and Shiho once again acknowledges that agreeing with someone's reasoning doesn't mean wanting to follow their advice.

"Dumas loved you until he died, but you couldn't return his feelings," Shinichi remarks, changing the subject since he can sense Marie's withdrawal. "You resemble Caroline Esterházy, who you pity."

"Alexandre loved the idea of the poor misguided creature he had to save from this immoral world," Marie coolly states while covering the scores in her basket with nosegays and tea boxes. "He had never been truly in love with me. He attempted to fade out of my life and explained his reasons to me in a message only after I asked. He couldn't handle my lifestyle just as I couldn't handle his silent treatment. It was good riddance!"

"And Liszt?"

"Much has been written about my love life—especially about my friendship with Franz." Marie sighs in exasperation, but her voice has become raspy and her dark eyes have instantly lit up, giving Shiho a glimpse of the woman she would become if she ever grew up. "Losing him was the greatest disappointment—the final nail in my coffin—but I often wonder why I had fallen in love with him… It surely wasn't his divine music." She is gesticulating wildly, grasping for invisible words. "I could sense that Franz wasn't a fine composer—not at that stage. His passion was fleeting and superficial; there was no real weight to it. Completely devoid of depth just like his letters and speeches. I very much preferred Chopin's music. If it had only been for the music, I'd have fallen in love with Chopin!"

"Maybe you would have, if he had been at the right place at right time… Lovers are interchangeable, after all," Shinichi coolly observes. "Love is never really about the person but always about the timing, the place, the situation."

Marie considers the thought as she glides out of the room, protected by her worn grey cloak and her flower basket with unassuming nosegays. To all the guests on the brightly lit floors, she is only a poor flower girl looking forward to her rickety bed after a long day.

"Maybe… I could read the situation when it came to other men, but I could never comprehend my feelings for Franz. I wasn't the only one who was besotted with him—most women fainted when he touched the keys." She gives a wan smile. "Hans was right: Franz was like fire; he could warm you unless you got too close—and then you burned!"

"Hans?"

"Hans Christian." Marie seems taken aback by Shiho's ignorance. "I mean Andersen."

Shiho didn't know that Hans Christian Andersen had ever met Franz Liszt, but sensing that Marie has become talkative, she suppresses the urge to comment on it.

"Although I sensed that Franz would never let me cling to him, I did all I could to stay by his side. I was happy to learn that he mourned my death—he even wrote a few lines about it. But he soon found happiness in another mistress' arms."

The lady of the camellias pauses, trembling at the thought as though it still hurt, but her face remains perfectly serene. "Carolyne was a princess—as expected. She was also married, ugly, unbearably dull, and smoked heavy cigars—but she remained his muse for years. They lived together and fought together for the annulment of her marriage until it proved impossible and he found solace in the orders for priesthood. I was right about his desire to be part of the aristocracy—I was mistaken about his love of beauty and brains. Carolyne and he were connected by their mutual yearning for God. And since he lacked the patience to sit still for an extended time, she stayed in the same room with him while he composed his work…"

Marie stares at a red rose in her flower basket as if she had come to realize the truth at last, centuries after pondering the issue.

"I wanted freedom, which only he could give. But he needed spirituality and steadiness—I couldn't give him what he longed for."

She demonstratively yawns—elegantly concealing her lower face with a dainty hand—and swiftly turns to climb the winding stairs to the highest tower. "Maybe we're all doomed to long for something we can never have. I suffered so much back then! I even died of it. But now I can't even remember if he had ever played a Schubert _Fantasie_ for me. Time heals all wounds, c'est la vie."

"Who are you in love with now?" Shiho asks, remembering Hyoga's smile and wondering whether she should give Marie her Tamingo Folly, which might inspire Marie to succumb to love's follies.

"Schubert—I'm in love with his music! If I had to choose one composer to study until the end of time, I'd choose him. Schumann is unstable and Chopin morbid—but Schubert's ever-absent, eternally unavailable lover is cathartic! His deceptive cadences make my loneliness so much easier to endure." Her lips part in an unexpectedly sweet smile revealing teeth like a string of pearls. "I'm done with real, living people—but Schumann was right: _Schubert's pencil was dipped in moonbeams_ …"

" _In moonbeams and in the flame of the sun,_ " the guide corrects her, whereupon she strokes his beak and laughs.

"Silly old thing! Silly Schumann! Who needs the glaring sun? Moonbeams are enough."

 _*snow*_

 _*snow* *snow* *snow* *snow* *snow*_

 _*snow*_

"Why are you still leading the Black Organization?" Shiho asks the lady of the camellias, idly wondering whether the Divine Marie doesn't pay enough to finance the former courtesan's lavish lifestyle.

Marie extends a hand, and the guide instantly leaves Shiho's shoulder to settle on Marie's. Like all parrots' loves, his love is circumscribed by a rigid hierarchy.

"I'm not actively leading the Black Organization—it's a living, breathing organism. It does whatever it wants. I'm only protecting myself from the intelligence services and other organizations eager to catch an immortal."

"Who is leading the Organization then?" Shinichi asks in surprise. "People are still disappearing. There are still heists conducted in the same style as always."

Like Marie's silence, the winding marble staircase they're climbing seems to go on forever.

"You believe someone is _in control_ of this? This can't be all what has remained, you must think. _Who is Moriarty_?"

They've reached the top of the tower, a stunningly embellished room with beautiful plaster cornices and mouldings and elaborate ceiling roses. Floor-to-ceiling book shelves line the walls. A cranberry-coloured Méridienne chaise longue—the eye-catcher of the room—is surrounded by a crescent formed by an antique mirror, an easel, and a mahogany concert grand. As Marie sinks into the chaise, the roof above them disappears, revealing a steel-blue sky. Slowly, the smoky green walls surrounding them dissolve as well; and they find themselves at the top of a high mountain overlooking the Ungrateful Dwarf, whose roar sounds faint and pathetic in the distance.

"It's the twenty-first century! But you're still playing God; you're still searching for the Devil. Why can't you accept the truth that no one is leading this? That it's a hive with an insignificant, tired queen bee? The engineers are working for free, the robbers share their loot. They're only taking nuggets—none of the conglomerates and banks have gone broke."

Marie raises her hand, and a blue portal opens, through which Shiho and Shinichi can glimpse an endless sea and, high above the waves, countless hanging bridges leading to a faraway cliff with a lone tower.

"Humans are creatures of habits, and this is what makes them happy. It costs them nothing—we only take what they voluntarily give. It's a solution to overpopulation, poverty, and loneliness. No one is forcing the organization members to stay here. The emotions are always the same, but this is better than a physical world with physical sufferings—with real thirst, hunger, illness, cold, pain. What can you offer these people to make them abandon their chosen world? A cheaper host service? A rented coffin apartment? A temporary place in an internet hotel?"

"Does everyone have their own portal?" Shinichi asks, involuntarily impressed by what he is seeing. The memory of her own portal and Gin's portal, to which Gin had often taken her, emerge for a moment before Shiho's eyes; but Shiho, who has prepared herself mentally for it before they embarked on this journey, easily brushes it aside.

"Only the codename members, who have contributed to the growth of the Organization."

"The secret services are watching us at the moment," Shinichi informs Marie. He looks almost regretful, as though he felt tempted to stay in her universe. "All of this will have to end soon—but maybe Itakura's project can be used for entertainment or educational purposes. I'm also sure you're going to receive witness protection."

"Are they really watching?" Marie, who has leant back in her chaise, remains unimpressed. "I'm sure they aren't—the Night Baron has taken care of it while we were talking."

No sooner did she finish her sentence than a snow storm, which has brewed in the portal, sweeps across the world outside. In the wake of the rising wind, shapeless, misty snow creatures emerge from the sky.

"I won't prevent you two from leaving, but I can't help you return to your world unscathed." Marie's deep voice is tinged with worry. "If you had read the small print before signing the agreement, you must know about this. This is how the whole machinery works."

Shiho draws the revolver.

"Nonsense, you _can_ help us since you can always call them back! It's _you_ who has created them, after all."

"I can't!" Marie insists as the storm covers their surroundings in a raging sea of snow and silver. " _You_ are the ones who've asked for this. It's not easy for me to control them when they're _inside_. Controlling them while they're _outside_ is impossible!"

While Shiho's bullets don't accomplish anything, hitting the snow creatures with the revolver makes them retreat for an instant. Shinichi, knocked away by a gust of wind, is more lucky wielding the cane, for the snow creatures, who have taken on the shape of white wolves, dissolve whenever they're hit by a silver bullet. Yet the snow turns into water, and the water turns into ice and the ice into silver mirrors, which reflect each other ad infinitum—and each silver bullet fired is deflected by a mirror towards Shiho, brushing her shoulders and her neck, while she tries to evade them.

"I see, they want me to become your enemy," Shinichi laconically comments. "Since I can't shoot under these circumstances and the cane is breaking, you'll have to do it for both of us. Fight your way here!"

Hurling hard items at the snow creatures slows them down enough for Shiho to hit each of the wolves with her revolver until they retreat. Hence Shiho, disoriented and blinded by the infinity mirrors' reflections, keeps flinging powder pots and ammonia and vinegar and arsenic bottles and rosewater flasks at anything that moves, holding her ground well although she is unable to make space to move forward.

Meanwhile, the snow wolves have encircled Shinichi and her respectively, threatening to suffocate each of them in a fluffy blanket of snow.

"We can't go on like this," she tells Shinichi, who has run out of flasks and pots and can barely keep the pack of snow wolves away. "I can't deal with them on my own! They're coming from all directions." She is still trying hard to fight her way to him, but the walls of enemies she is facing thwart her attempts. "Just use your cane to protect yourself!" Losing her memory doesn't sound as inviting as it once did before she discovered that she had a friend, but Shinichi has much more to return to despite his current marital problems.

"If I protect myself, I _will_ injure you," he stubbornly insists. "I think it will benefit us more if you come here and we fight back to back so that I can't accidentally hit you in the process."

"He loves you, truly—" observes Marie, who has been watching the scene in bewildered silence "—despite the splinters in his eyes!" She looks genuinely puzzled, as though she can no longer grasp the concept of loving someone. The storm abates as the last snow creatures disappear although the portal to Marie's sea remains open, shimmering in all shades of blue like a promise of eternal constancy and peace.

The bracelet around Shiho's wrist dissolves into thin air as if it had never been there, but Marie remains reclining in her chaise, immovable like a porcelain figurine, until a peal of distant church bells wake her up. "I've loved sincerely, but no one ever returned my love." Sorrow descends over her voice like a faint mist over the snowy landscape, but no trace of emotion can be found in her faraway eyes, which seem to roam about a century-old memory tower. "I've done my best, I've given my all," she says again—in a voice lower than a whisper although the deathly silence lend vehemence to her statement. "I once loved someone so much that I died from it, but you see…" She closes her eyes, resigned. "Not even my death could make him love me."

She turns and walks away, retreating into her refuge of everlasting snow and ice. For a moment, Shiho wonders whether she should say something, do something, but there is nothing left to do or say. She could tell Marie that Hyoga had been infatuated with her for a year before he refocused his attention back on work, but she senses that Marie doesn't want to hear about it. It was but a scented candle, burned down like her brief liaison with Liszt. What _La Dame aux Camélias_ longed for was something more profound than that, something she could never find in life but only in music—something that the world's best gigolo could never give.

 _*snow*_

 _*snow* *snow**snow*_

 _*snow* *snow*_

 _*snow*_

"What are we going to do about my impaired vision now?" asks Shinichi on the way back, when they pause at a frozen lake to check their inventories and weapons. "I want to spend the rest of my life without these 'distortions'."

Tears would help—floods of burning, salty tears, which will sweep the splinters away. But making Shinichi cry is a challenge Shiho would rather not face, and using her own tears like Gerda did in _The Snow Queen_ is impossible. She tries to read him several passages featuring Sherlock Holmes' downfall from Michael Dibdin's _The Last Sherlock Holmes Story_ , but not even they manage to flush out the splinters.

"The mirror splinters could be helpful during your investigations," she remarks, resigned. "Seeing everyone's weaknesses and faults will make it easy for you to spot the culprit's fatal flaw."

"No, it's a pain to experience the world like this! I can't recognize the fundamental flaw when every blemish is highlighted. It's like using a magnifying glass in one's spectacles… I can't see the forest for the trees, or the blizzard for the snowflakes, if you prefer that mental picture."

She can comprehend why he wants to get rid of them, but she can't figure out how to solve the problem unless she sacrifices herself.

So what are we going to do now?—she asks even though she remembers how _The Snow Queen_ ended.

"Looks like you'll have to kiss me," he suggests, emotionless as usual. "It's the only way to melt the ice in my heart."

"All right," she agrees. "But only because you've asked for it! Come here!"

He takes a step towards her and she gets on her toes, scrutinizing him for a moment which lasts too long for either of them to feel comfortable. An awkward, painful silence descends over them as they kiss, accompanied by Chopin's piano music.

"A Chopin waltz!" exclaims Shinichi, who has pulled away from the kiss, as if he were trying to distract her from what they've been doing. "You know which one!"

There are no wedding bells, no tears of joy, no romantic kiss, no discernable growth—perhaps because she has failed to do all that was necessary. But maybe it's not her… Maybe the problem lies in _The Snow Queen_ , the product of a weepy, self-absorbed Victorian writer's mind, anachronistic in a world that has experienced two world wars and postmodernism.

"I know. It's 'Les Adieux'. 'Farewell'." The waltz they heard at Hyoga's place.

"But this isn't a farewell, is it?"

It is definitely a farewell in her eyes, but she doesn't need to tell him. "Your voice sounds lovely, you know," she remarks in passing, in her usual teasing voice. This will be the last compliment he receives. There is only so much affection one can give when one's feelings aren't reciprocated.

"I should hope it sounds lovely; I paid good money for that microphone on a whim."

"You didn't even get it from the Professor but bought it yourself?" she asks in amazement, feeling the blood rush to her cheeks. He must be trying hard to impress her.

"I liked it… Ran liked it a lot, too, when we tried it out in the store last spring."

It was the final cold shower she needed.

"Why haven't you two made up yet? Are you still angry at your parents for taking her side?"

"Of course I'm still angry at my parents! They treat me as though I were nine!"

"You do behave like a nine-year-old sometimes!"

"Thank you for nothing! I thought at least _you_ were on my side!"

The sun is setting, bathing the snow-covered hills in a faint violet glow. Snowflakes are whirling to the waltz like miniature ballerinas, some of whom are sparkling brighter than usual.

Against the glorious sky, Shinichi's and Shiho's silhouettes resemble binary black holes, near enough to be companions but far enough to never be touching. There must be something she can do to remove the mirror splinters for Shinichi, but Shiho's mind feels like a blank canvas which has begun to repel paint. Her eyes sting when she gazes into the sunset, but she blocks it out, blinks it away. Maybe it's really her who can't accept the truth. It would be easier for both of them if she had mirror splinters in her heart as well.

Rummaging through her inventory in search of something useful to alleviate her pain, which has sapped her strength to a degree that endangers her survival, Shiho discovers the onion she received from Hyoga in the basket of camellias and apples. It seemed so useless back then, and she has completely forgotten about it, but now it has revealed itself to be a precious gift. Elated by the stroke of luck, she considers cutting it, but her intuition tells her to take it slow.

Stubborn as always, Shinichi only shows a reaction after Shiho has removed all of the onion's layers, revealing a tiny mirror. The light reflected in the mirror is so glaring that it threatens to burn a hole into the snowy landscape. But when it enters Shinichi's unflinching eyes, the ice surrounding Shinichi's heart melts at last—and with Shinichi's tears, two splinters of the devil's mirror are dislodged from his eyes and drop into the snow.

The frozen lake begins to melt—the ice in it is transforming into vertical silver crystals, into "candles".

Ignoring the sharp pain which must have been caused by the mirror's glaring light and the new dizzy, foreign sensation in her head and in her eyes, Shiho stomps Shinichi's mirror splinters into the ground in the hope that these particular splinters will remain buried although there are many more that are still whirling through the air, diminishing the effect Shinichi's eyes used to have on her as they shimmer and twinkle alluringly like silver crystals or diamonds or even stars…

Heavenly, alien creatures. Unattainably beautiful and surreal.

 _*snow* *snow* *snow*_

 _*snow* *snow* *snow*_

 _*snow*_

 _A white figure, whose outlines remain indistinct in the shifting candlelight, is leaning against an intricate human-sized mirror, whose glittering surface is alternately concave and convex in the pattern of an archetypal snowflake. For an endless minute, they stare at a shadow above their right shoulder._

 _From a gramophone, the last chords of a Schubert_ Fantasie _are being played, performed by Benjamin Britten and Svjatoslav Richter, who was said to be the greatest pianist of his generation. When the music dies, the white figure begins to blow out the candles, and the shadows in the room gradually fade away._

 _Outside the window, snowflakes slowly drift down from the sky: perfectly cut diamonds or silver crystals shimmering rosé and blue in the pale moonlight. When the camera zooms in, you can see that the snowflakes are white camellias: Snow Flurries, imperfect and irregular._

 _*snow*_

 _*snow**snow**snow*_

 _*snow**snow**snow*_

 _*snow*_

* * *

 _A/N:_

Last winter, watching the hustle and bustle of the Christmas event on the CoAi Discord server, I felt the unfortunate desire to write a winter-themed Shinichi/Shiho fic; and my trusted gaming pal Muphrid wished for something with snow. So here it is, a gaming snow fic for a gamer!

This fic has become a jumbled mix of everything I've been immersed in over the last months. After all the intense emotions in _Ghost at Twilight_ , I wanted to write something which isn't only served cooled like the chocolate in _Becoming Conan_ but is truly icy, like a snowy mountain or a frozen lake.

 _The Snow Queen_ , Andersen's fairy tale, has never been one of my favourites. I dislike it as a whole but love parts of it for some reason. It's about roses, trust, growth, true love, memory, vanity, rejection, and loneliness. I wanted to use those topics for my own fic, weaving the present and the past as well as fantasy and reality together to create a fairytale-like adventure game. Marie Duplessis is a real character, whose biography is fascinating and so fitting to the fairytale theme (who else could be both the Snow Queen and Snow White?) that I had to choose her as the founder of the organization, the one whose loneliness only Shiho can understand. Hyoga and the mediators are all inventions of mine although, in the case of the mediators, I've stolen the names of famous Victorian dandies. I've also inserted gaming experiences and in-jokes so that the story is both real and unreal, true with white lies which brighten teeth, a famous claim made by Marie Duplessis.

I lost thousands of words of the ending when my laptop broke down earlier this year. I intended this story to have a happy end, and the original ending was indeed much happier, but I simply couldn't feel it again when I tried to rewrite it.

Funnily enough, I remembered I had once emailed the ending to myself and found the email with the happy ending only after rewriting it. Since I like this ending much better, losing the original ending turned out to be a happy accident.


End file.
